


the bravest person i knew.

by beepbeep (aceface)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Bringing Eddie Kaspbrak back, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Minor Richie/OC, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier-centric, chaotic gay energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2020-10-24 21:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20712902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceface/pseuds/beepbeep
Summary: If you think that Richie Tozier would just be like 'well, Eddie's dead and buried, guess I better move on with my life' then you're wrong. Eddie didn't deserve to die, and Richie's going to do whatever it takes to get him back. Stage one is getting the body.-“Eddie died,” Richie says. “Am I crazy for thinking we can do this?”“Love doesn’t die,” Ben says.“Eddie’s pretty dead, dude,” Richie says. “His body’s literally decomposing in the ice box.”





	1. Mike.

**Author's Note:**

> The first chaptered fic I've done in about ten years. I'm going to try and update this weekly. Fingers crossed.

Richie goes back for the body.

That’s stage one of the plan. There’s no stage two but there will be, and he’s pretty sure that he’ll need Eddie’s body for it. Either way, even if his mind wasn’t working overtime, like, he can probably smell burning soon from it overheating, get it, because he never uses it - but even if, he still couldn’t leave Eddie down there, in the sewers, alone. 

The thought of it - of just fucking off out of Derry, of Beverly and Ben running away to their fucking blue skies and expensive yacht and leaving Eddie, terrified brave Eddie, just rotting away down there in the sewers - Richie doesn’t understand how the rest of them are all cool with it. Eddie would fucking hate it - he _ did _ hate it down there, and of all the people to talk him into going, it was Richie. Richie had talked Eddie into going down there and Eddie had died down there, and the least that Richie can do is bring his body out.

It should’ve been Bill. It would’ve been better if Bill had died instead. He wanted to be with Georgie and that’s how this whole thing had started anyway. Or maybe even Mike, who’d lied to all of them, Jesus, telling them he had the answer when he didn’t know jackshit more than the rest of them.

It doesn’t matter anyway, except for how it matters a lot, because Eddie’s dead.

So that’s what he does. That’s stage one.

Well, the real stage one is pulling his laptop out of his backpack, when he’s back in the Town House and everyone else but Mike has gone, and typing in _ how to clear debris_. It’s not very helpful. Richie backspaces carefully and tries: _ how do I get rid of a load of rocks_.

Eventually he figures out that he needs a digger or some kind of heavy machinery, and he’ll have to operate it himself because hiring someone to clear rocks out of a murder clown’s collapsed lair to recover a co- Eddie (he can’t think of it as a corpse - as anything but _ Eddie_) seems like a lot of explanations that Richie wants to avoid.

And yeah, he’s dropped off the radar a little bit, but he’s still, like, a minor celebrity. He doesn’t want to get cancelled over necrophilia accusations - if he’s going to get cancelled, it’ll be over something really cool. He hasn’t decided what yet.

It’s crazy. He _ knows _ it’s fucking crazy, okay? He can sort of objectively step outside himself and look at the situation and think, this is fucking insane. But here’s the thing - Richie can’t stop.

He just physically cannot move on and leave Eddie alone down there. He can’t leave Eddie dead. Does not compute.

If they can fight a shapeshifting murder clown or the manifestation of their childhood fears or whatever (although Richie had never really been scared of Paul Bunyan before Paul did… _ that _) then they can bring someone back from the dead. According to Mike, It is really some kind of weirdo alien that dropped down on an asteroid (“Please,” Richie had said, “no one tell the Scientologists”). Cool.

If Richie lives in a world with fucking aliens that show up as clowns to get their rocks off scaring small children, he can bring Eddie back from the dead. You can do anything, if you want it badly enough. And Richie has always wanted Eddie more than he’s ever wanted anything else. He can remember that now.

But you can’t take a digger down some sewers so in the end Richie does it the old fashioned way. He travels back into his nightmares, every single night, twitching at the slightest sound or movement, and uses his hands and a hammer to smash the rocks into bits until he can remove them.

It’s both harder and easier than he expected, especially when he’s waiting for a red balloon to float out every time he makes any progress. It’s slow going - there’s blood under his nails and his skin scrapes off, but it’s not like he’s working to a deadline. So Richie goes back there, night after night, ready to do whatever it takes to free Eddie from the rocks.

There’s a moment on the day he makes it out of the sewer and he sort of props Eddie’s body up against the banks, just so he can sit down and catch his breath. He’d pulled a groin muscle of all things on the way out - he’s forty, not thirteen, and it’s never been more apparent than it feels right now.

He’s sat there with Eddie, slumped in a sitting position, his actual fucking _ corpse _ and all Richie can think is, man, I wish I had a beer. Because that’d just cap the whole thing off, wouldn’t it? Having a drink with the murdered body of the love of your fucking life?

“Shit,” he says out loud, to either no one or Eddie. “Maybe I should just Weekend at Bernie’s this whole thing. It already feels like a total fuckin’ farce.” He thinks again about a beer, then says, “Look, I wasn’t going to let you float down there. _ It doesn’t get to have you float down there_.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, which hurts. Like, physically hurts, all over, to the point where Richie kind of just wants to curl up in the fetal position and lose his shit for a few hours. He hadn’t had the chance before - yeah, there’d been a group hug, but he couldn’t really lose it - not with Eddie still down there, ready to rot away in the dark.

So he turns to face Eddie, because he doesn’t know how much of this Eddie will remember, and he says, “Look, Eds, here’s a promise. I’m getting you back. Maybe I’ve gone insane. In fact, I’m pretty sure I _ have _gone insane, but that’s fine, because you’re dead, so you can’t fucking judge me. You hear?”

_ Beep beep, Richie_.

Richie stops, takes a deep breath. Tips his head back with his eyes closed and feels the sun on his face. It’s tempting to just leave it. To walk away, like the others did. But there’s something missing where Eddie used to be. As much as he hates to admit it, Richie spent twenty seven years missing Eddie without even knowing he was. And that was when Eddie was _ alive _.

Richie’s fucked either way now. He might as well make an _ effort_.

-

When Richie had seen Eddie at the Chinese restaurant it had been like a punch in the gut. Look, Richie’s not carrying around a fucking yearbook signature in his wallet, okay? He’s not that much of a sap - if he was, he’d have killed himself and saved Pennywise a job. Richie has made a point of _ not _ pining away after fucking _ Eddie Kaspbrak _ for twenty seven years. Or at least, he thought so.

He’d felt pretty confident going in there. His comic career was going well, he was tall - okay, he didn’t seem to have hit the supermodel looks jackpot like Beverly and Ben, but Richie had mostly been banking on the ‘didn’t peak in high school’ goal and he’d managed to achieve that, at the very least.

Then he’d seen Eddie, and it was like being caught under a tidal wave. Just a big ol’ rush of feelings and Richie had groped for the nearest bottle of anything on the table and taken a swig of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Eddie Kaspbrak. It was embarrassing.

It’s easy to think you’ve gotten over someone when you literally _ can’t remember _ your feelings for them.

-

While the internet has a lot of the answers and was, in fact, very helpful when Richie remembered he was gay and wanted to watch a few videos to make sure, AKA, when he jerked it to Eddie lookalikes so hard that he’s surprised he didn’t pull his own dick off, Richie’s not sure that googling ‘how to bring someone back from the dead’ is really going to cut it this time.

He’s not even like - if there’s a way he can undo it without raising a zombie, Richie’s here for that. If he can put Eddie’s consciousness in like a robot body? That’d be fine, although Richie’s more attached than he wants to admit to Eddie’s dumb dead face. Because it’s Eddie’s face, not because it’s dead. But the key point is that he wants Eddie _ not _ to be dead and he doesn’t care what he does to make it happen.

(Honestly, he thought calling Eddie ‘Eds’ would do it, because if anyone could come back to life fueled by the sheer force of their rage at Richie’s choices, it would be Eddie. He’s still a little surprised that one didn’t work out.)

And once you rule out the internet, the second expert on weird shit would absolutely have to be Mike Hanlon. Luckily, he hasn’t fucked off to Florida yet. The first piece of luck Richie’s had since all this started.

“Shit, Richie,” Mike says, when Richie turns up at the library. “Have you been sleeping? You look awful. Are you still having nightmares?”

“Yes and no,” Richie says, pushing by him. The place still looks like a bomb’s hit. Is Bowers’ body still there? If not, who’d got rid of it? Richie doesn’t remember any of that at all. “I’m fine. How are you? Great? Awesome. Love to hear it.”

“Is that dirt under your fingernails?” Mike says. “And _ all over your fingers_? What have you been doing, Richie? Why the fuck are you even in Derry still?”

“Just hanging out, relaxing, maxin’ all cool,” Richie says. “Standard. I just haven’t got around to leaving yet. Who knows where I’ll go!”

“Home,” Mike says slowly. “Richie, you should go home.” He gestures to the suitcase on his floor, half full of clothes and papers. Mike is clearly not an expert at packing but Richie guesses that he’s never needed to be, staying in Derry his entire fucking life. Jesus. If Eddie wasn’t dead - and Stan too - Mike would win the award for worst life. He’s still a contender.

It says a lot about their friendship group that killing yourself only puts you in joint second for the ‘dealt the shittiest hand’ award.

“So, these Native Americans,” Richie says, trying to drop it into the conversation casually. He leans against Mike’s desk, watching him decide what he needs to take with him from the chaos of the library. “And their crazy rituals.” He wiggles his fingers a bit. “Did they have any others?”

Mike stops sorting through the papers on his desk to stare at Richie. “Never had you down as a scholar.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, motherfucker,” Richie says. “You want to answer my question?”

“You want to tell me why you’re asking?”

“I’m curious!” Richie says. “I don’t know what to do with myself now it’s all over. Maybe I’ll join a tribe and worship the moon.”

“That’s offensive on different levels and the worst part is that I’m pretty sure you know that,” Mike says. “Now you wanna cut the shit and tell me why you’re really asking?”

“No,” Richie says sulkily. “I can’t tell you. You’ll think I’m insane.”

“You’re not exactly filling me with confidence that you’re not,” Mike says dryly. 

“I just want to _ know _ ,” Richie says. “It’s not bad if I just want to _ know _.”

“You just want to know about dangerous and arcane rituals?” Mike says and Richie feels his heart trying to grab onto that, says, “So there was more than one?”

“Obviously there was more than one,” Mike says. “There’s more evil out there than just Pennywise.”

“Okay, that falls under something I _ didn’t _ want to know,” Richie says, and peers at Mike suspiciously. “You’re not working up to becoming the next Buffy are you? Because we survived this one but I’m writing that off as luck of the draw, plus I don’t think you could pull off a choker.”

“Honestly,” Mike says, “once I’m packed up, I’m getting as far away from all of this mystical shit as I can. And that’s why I’m confused, because as far as I could tell, we were all ready to move on from _ all _ of this.”

“I can’t,” Richie says, suddenly choked up. “I can’t move on from Eddie.”

Sympathy washes across Mike’s face and he pulls out a chair, pushing Richie into it even as Richie’s swallowing down his sobs, trying to breathe around the bruise in his throat, his lungs, his heart.

“I did wonder,” Mike says, squatting down in front of Richie and wrapping his hands around Richie’s as he looks up into his face. “Is this why you’ve been so quiet?”

“Quiet?” Richie says and Mike squeezes his hands.

“You haven’t replied to anyone’s messages. Ben even set you up perfectly for a ‘I fucked your mom’ joke in the group chat the other day and you just…”

Eddie’s last words. Richie bites down on the inside of his cheek as hard as he can.

“You’re not going to like this,” he manages to say. “But I have to bring him back.”

“I think you should see a professional,” Mike says and it’s distracting enough that Richie says, “There are professional dead-raisers? Seriously? You’ve been holding out on me, why have I been researching this shit if I could just pay someone to do it?”

Mike makes a face that Richie can’t read and says, “I meant - a therapist.”

“This,” Richie says, “is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Richie,” Mike says, then stops.

“Look,” Richie says, because it’s not imperative that Mike understands - that _ any _ of them understand - because Richie’s going to get this done regardless. But. It would definitely be _ easier _ if Mike was on board. “We’ve been through a lot of weird shit. We lost _ Stan_. You can’t tell me you don’t still miss him. We literally forgot our entire childhoods. There was so much weird shit that I honestly can’t even list it. I wouldn’t know where to start. You follow?”

“So far,” Mike says. “Yes, I follow.”

“Like, Bill’s brother died and spent a shitload of time running around in the sewers being used as a hand puppet for a murder clown,” Richie says, just to really get his point across. “And that was just _ one fucking episode _ in the fucked up season of our lives. Right?”

“Right, yes,” Mike says. “I was there too. I get it. But Richie, that doesn’t-”

“SO,” Richie says, as loudly as he can, “saving Eddie really barely even ranks on the list of weird insane shit that we’ve been doing for decades. So when you look at it like that, it’s fine, Mike. It’s fine.”

“It’s so far from fine,” Mike says.

“We can’t leave him behind,” Richie says. He didn’t think that it mattered, if the others understood, but now he realises that it does. It really matters, for Eddie’s sake. Not for Richie’s. “He’s one of us. He’s a Loser. He was right there with us.”

“We all agreed to make sacrifices.”

“I agreed to sacrifice a fucking arcade token!” Richie says. “Not _ Eddie_. I’d never have agreed if it meant Eddie.”

“We agreed to sacrifice the past,” Mike says and Richie blows a raspberry in his face and says, “We’re not each others’ pasts. We couldn’t even remember the fucking past. Eddie was…” He mumbles the last part which is fucking stupid because of course Mike’s dumb ears prick up.

“Eddie was what?”

“He was my _ future_,” Richie says. “Okay? Are you fucking happy? I’m a flaming homo and I never told any of you. I’m so fucking gay that even Pennywise knew, and he’s a freaky murder clown. Okay? Is that enough for you, Mike? Are you happy now?”

Mike doesn’t look happy but not in a homophobic way, which is a relief. Richie didn’t think he would be but Richie also forgot his own sexuality for twenty seven years, so he’s not convinced that he’s really the expert on how anyone’s going to react.

“If you’re mad about the gay thing,” Richie says, just in case, “then just remember I haven’t got properly pissed off with you over lying to us and nearly getting us _ all _ killed by your stupid fucking ritual - which by the way, you read off the side of a shitty jar - so I’ve got that in my back pocket.”

Mike opens his mouth and Richie adds, “Also, I saved your life! I saved you! From Henry Bowers. So just remember _ that _ as well.” He makes a weighing up motion with his hands. “Gay,” he says, raising one. “Life-saver who didn’t lie to everyone about a super fucking important ritual.” He raises the other hand higher.

Mike sighs. “I’m not mad about you being gay, Richie. Give me a little more credit than that.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve only remembered that I’m gay for about three fucking weeks so sorry if I’m still a little sensitive about it.”

“So,” Mike says. “Dirt on your hands. Not been sleeping. You went back and got him, didn’t you?”

“I can neither confirm,” Richie says, “or deny.”

“Where are you keeping his body?”

Great question. It’d been tricky. He couldn’t put Eddie in the bath, which would be the obvious choice, because Eddie would hate that after he’d been stabbed in there. Bad associations. But keeping a corpse in your bed is just weird - Richie isn’t far gone enough not to know that. Really, there’s no good place to keep a body. So in the end, he’d gone for the ice chest thing round the back of the motel. It wasn’t like anyone else was staying there, and he wasn’t totally stupid - he’d bought a padlock and chain so no one could just stumble across Eddie’s body and get the wrong idea.

Richie’s thinking now, though, that the look on Mike’s face means that he might not see the logic in this particular train of thought.

“Around,” he says evasively. “I feel like we’re getting off track here, Mike, Mikey, you need to listen to me. I know it sounds crazy but we need to bring back Eddie. If you’re not down with this, that’s fine, all I’m asking is that you leave me your notes on all this occult shit and I’ll figure it out myself.”

Mike sighs deeply, surrounded by twenty years of research. Richie thinks vaguely that they never thanked him, Mike, for being the one to stay. That’s probably because Mike’s also the one who dragged them back and Richie doesn’t know about anyone else, but sometimes he’d much rather go back to being a famous comedian with no memory of all this fucked up shit. So when you think about it like that, there’s not really anything to thank him for. Still.

“When have we ever faced anything alone?” Mike says finally. “Besides, you can’t research for shit. I’ll do it.”

“You’ll… do what,” Richie says, because he knows what it sounds like Mike is saying, but he can’t let himself believe it unless Mike spells it out for him. Hope is another thing that died in the sewers.

“I’ll see if there’s any way we can reverse what happened to Eddie,” Mike says, and points a finger at Richie. “On one condition. No, two.”

“It depends,” Richie says. “What do you want? Secrets? I got loads of them. Childhood fears? Surprisingly, not clowns, although I’m shit scared of them now, obviously.”

“None of that,” Mike says. “Although please don’t keep any big secrets from me. No, I need you to promise me that you won’t go off and do anything alone. Please, Richie.” His eyes are watery and he scrubs at them with the back of one hand impatiently. “I love you,” he says. “You, Bill, Bev, Ben… Stan. Eddie. So I’ll do this for you. But if you end up killing yourself over this, I don’t know how I’d carry on. So you have to promise me that you won’t run off and do this on your own.”

“Sure,” Richie says, and rolls his eyes when Mike gives him a _ look_. “Right, yeah, I promise. Okay? As long as you’re actually helping me and not trying to trick me into therapy. Because they already tried to make me go and I said _ no no no _.”

“The problem with you is that I think you’ve always been insane,” Mike says. “Like, seriously, if you really go crazy, I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell.”

“You’re welcome, _ amigo_,” Richie says and Mike slumps back in his chair and says, “I really wish I’d made ‘no Voices’ condition number two.”

“You said ‘number two’,” Richie points out and grins. “Okay, what’s through door _ numero dos_?”

“You have to tell me where the body is.”

“In an ice box at the back of the motel,” Richie says promptly. “I don’t know if we need it or not, I don’t know how the fuck all this works but I couldn’t - I couldn’t -” He has to stop. He keeps seeing it on the inside of his eyelids when he tries to sleep, when he blinks, floating in front of him any time he stops thinking about something in particular.

Eddie - reaching up to touch Richie’s face, trying to be brave - just the thought of that alone actually hurts Richie’s heart. Like, literally. The thought of leaving Eddie down there, Eddie, who hates germs and diseases and didn’t want to go down there in the first place, who was really the bravest of them all - leaving his body to rot under debris next to a fucking clown corpse in the place he hated more than anything -

Even an ice box is better than that.

_ Ice boxes aren’t exactly sanitary_, Eddie says in Richie’s head. _ They can spread Legionnaires’ disease, for a start- _

“Beep beep, Eddie,” Richie says under his breath. Mike looks at him and Richie chooses to ignore it. “So we’re doing this? Me and you, the old gang back together? We should have a team name. Mitchie? Or do you prefer Rike, because yes, maybe it sounds a little cooler but I’m not really sold on either.”

“I’m still leaving,” Mike says. “Once we’ve figured this out. The only reason I’m sticking around is because you’ll end up dead if you try and do this alone.”

“So you think it’s dangerous,” Richie says. “That means you think it could work.”

“We still don’t know what we’re doing, but the thought of you fucking around with any kind of ritual gives me hives,” Mike says. “Have you thought what you’re going to do if this doesn’t work? If we can’t find anything?”

“We will,” Richie says firmly. This ‘not working’ isn’t an option. Richie is prepared to become a mad scientist and give up his life and join a bunch of weird messageboards and call himself a Wiccan if that’s what it takes. There has to be a way. This is the final trick that It pulled on them, and there’s always been a way out of those.

(He doesn’t think about It’s other victims, the ones who didn’t come back.)

“And you never know,” Richie says, with almost manic brightness. “If it works, maybe we could bring Stan back, too! Then the whole gang really _ would _ be back together. Tag yourself, I’m Scooby Dooby Doo.”

“No voices,” Mike says.

-

Back at the motel - and Richie really hates this motel, but he can’t leave Eddie - Richie lies back on the most uncomfortable bed in the world (and he’s been on a lot of cheap shitty comedy tours so actually, it’s impressive that the Town House's mattress manages to be _ this bad _) and tries not to think about Eddie dying.

It’s not impossible, but it’s really fucking hard. He doesn’t know what to do with himself without Eddie, which is really stupid because he managed for twenty seven years, right? It’s almost like the reverse of losing his memories is happening now he’s back - like everything that happened in those years is slowly fading and feeling more like a dream he once had, and Derry’s returning, bright and vivid.

Eddie had kissed him, once. Richie had forgotten all about that. 

It was right before they went off to college - Richie had gone to UMass, dropped out after one semester to focus on his comedy, back when he wrote his own jokes. It’d been easier, then; it was harder to write a comedy set when you couldn’t remember most of your childhood or teenage years. Lotta material there to draw on.

They’d been hanging out at Richie’s, doing anything to avoid Eddie’s mom.

“She keeps hugging me,” Eddie said. They were lying side by side on Richie’s bed with The Cure blasting out of the speakers and Richie was pretending to have a fit, shaking his whole body at once. Eddie was ignoring him, which was fair.

“Moms do that,” Richie said, except he was still shaking, so it came out more like “Mo-o-oms do-o-o tha-a-at.” It wasn’t very funny or anything, but he was trying to see how long he had to keep it going before Eddie snapped.

“No, but like… really intense,” Eddie said. He rolled over, curled in on himself like a comma. “She smushes my head into her boobs and won’t let go of me.”

“That’s what she did to me last night,” Richie said automatically. “Gross, dude. Get your head out of your mom’s tits.”

“Don’t say that,” Eddie said and Richie said, “What, your mom’s tits? I don’t need to say it when I saw them last night.”

“Can you give it a fucking rest?” Eddie snapped. “Jesus, it’s not much better being here than there if you’re going to do that.”

Eddie seemed like he didn’t want to be at Richie’s a lot, but Eddie also _ was _ at Richie’s a lot. They’d all sort of drifted after the clown thing, especially after Bev moved away, but Richie couldn’t let himself drift from Eddie even if he wanted to, didn’t know how to do anything other than cling onto him with both hands - sometimes literally. That was the worst, when Eddie was talking about his mom - because Richie got it, would also hug Eddie and never let go if he’d got the opportunity.

Oh God, did this mean he was turning into Eddie’s mom? Richie wanted to retch, only Eddie would want to know why and that was a path he didn’t want to go down. _ Paul Bunyan_, he thought. But he couldn’t really remember why.

“She’s going to literally smother you,” Richie said instead. “Like she’s going to do it one day and you won’t be able to get away and you’ll suffocate in your mom’s boobs.” He reached over and grabbed a pillow and held it over Eddie’s face, and tried not to think about how electric every nerve ending felt while he was kneeling over Eddie like this. Jesus, Tozier, get it the fuck together.

It was a good job that Eddie was going to college literally anywhere else, because Richie was minutes away from losing his shit every single minute. Jesus. How did people handle this? Did people actually in relationships feel like this all the time?

Eddie sat up to bat the pillow away, frowning. There was a little crease right above his eyebrows and Richie pressed his thumb against it without thinking.

“Cute,” he said. “Nice frown marks, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Don’t fucking _ call _ me that,” Eddie said, only Richie was struck by how close his face was. If he wanted to, and if he wasn’t a shit-scared baby, he could’ve just leaned forward the littlest bit and then they’d be kissing.

And then _ Eddie _ did it. Which was so fucking unexpected that Richie got confused for a minute. He’d been thinking about it and then it was happening but it seemed like he’d missed a step in between, and then Eddie pulled back and the crease was there, deeper, and Richie realised that he hadn’t kissed back at all.

He’d spent so much time fantasising (and sure, jerking it while he was doing it but that didn’t mean he couldn’t multitask) about exactly what he’d do in this situation and then it’d happened and he’d just done nothing! Nothing at all!

“Hey,” he said, late and stupid. “Uh. Could we do that again?”

“No,” Eddie said. “I’m tired. I think you should go home.”

Richie opened his mouth to argue and then he closed it again. Eddie wasn’t looking at him, like when Richie tried to put his face in front of his mom’s cat and it’d look everywhere but at Richie, twisting around to avoid eye contact.

He’d had his chance and he’d fucked it up, the way Richie managed to fuck everything else up. Shit, even his best friendship with Bill had ended with him getting punched in the face. It wasn’t fucking fair of Eddie just to kiss him and expect him to know how to react straight away.

Richie kicked the side of the bed as he stood up. His eyes were prickling with a familiar heat, but he refused to fucking cry in front of Eddie. It wasn’t _ fair _.

Richie looked back as he left, but Eddie was still staring at his bedsheets. They never talked about it again.

-

Mike calls him in the morning. Richie’s eyes are dry and he’s not sure he’s slept. It feels like someone packed them with sand without telling him, and his eyelids feel like they’re scraping over grit every time he blinks.

He goes downstairs to check on Eddie’s body. Yep, still there. Nothing seems to have set in yet, which is good. Richie doesn’t know how long it takes for bodies to start to decompose and fall apart. Maybe Eddie has some kind of magical preservative because he was killed by It. That would be pretty useful.

He locks the ice box again and looks at his phone. Two missed calls from Mike now.

Richie swipes his thumb across the screen to call him back. It rings once before Mike picks up and Richie jams his other hand in the pocket of his leather jacket, half expecting to feel an arcade token inside there. It’s not, of course. It was burned in the pointless ritual. God, Mike fucked this up once already. How can Richie trust him not to do it again?

He can’t, of course. But he doesn’t have a lot of other fucking options. Besides, like he said to Mike - he’s just going to keep going until something works. Failure isn’t an option.

“Hey,” says Mike. “I think I found something. Get over here.”

So Richie goes.


	2. Bill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some anti-semitism, homophobic and offensive language.

“Okay,” Mike says, when Richie shows up twenty minutes late with Starbucks. He hadn’t meant to. It was stupid to be late, when he was just itching for the chance to bring Eddie back - to see his dumb, pinched, screwed up face - to hear Eddie complain about how he probably had necrosis. There was no reason to be late, not when every minute that Eddie was dead was a minute that Richie didn’t want to be in.

But real talk, Richie was also terrified because yeah, Mike wasn’t wrong, he was fucking about with things that were really fucking dangerous. And he wasn’t even worried about dying, weirdly, because before this, with Pennywise - Richie hadn’t wanted to die. Richie, it sometimes felt like, had been the only one firmly on the ‘let’s not die’ train. Ironically, that train was also the ‘Georgie’s fucking dead, let’s move on’ train which - okay, so Richie was a bit of a hypocrite there. But he’d also been eleven or thirteen or however old, he still couldn’t remember.

The memories didn’t come back all at once. It wasn’t like they got back to Derry or they murdered Pennywise and there was this big flood and everyone was like ‘oh boy, I remember everything now!’ Richie was still discovering things, like stones he was only now turning over inside his mind. It was worse, like this; he kept remembering the way Eddie looked when Richie said something particularly infuriating, or when his mom had called him back in to say ‘I love you’. When he was older, and they were sixteen and drunk and trying to talk about girls.

Richie had been such a fucking _pussy_. Eddie had fucking kissed him and Richie, as far as he knew, had just been like ‘cool, guess you don’t want to talk about it!’ He was really hoping a memory came back where he like, climbed into Eddie’s room and _made_ him talk about it, but judging by the twenty seven years of repression and internalised homophobia, he didn’t have high hopes on that front.

“Yeah, sorry I’m late,” Richie says now, to Mike. He waves his coffee around as an explanation. “You know, caffeine calls, man must answer.”

“I have a coffee machine,” Mike says and Richie says, “Yeah, and it tastes like cat piss.”

He hands Mike the coffee anyway - black, because he doesn’t know what coffee Mike likes yet, but he stuffed his pockets full of sugar and cream packets anyway. One of the sugar packets split, and Richie can feel the crystals at the bottom of his pocket, getting underneath his fingernails.

“How do you even know what cat piss tastes like?” Mike says, and it’s too easy to say, “From the time I went down on your mom.”

Mike just smiles and takes a sip of his drink, and _that_ makes him miss Eddie all over again, another hit on his already bruised heart. No one ever rose to his taunts like Eddie did, no one has quite the same outraged expression.

But Richie’s spent enough time thinking_ it’s not fair, it’s not fair_, to the point where he’s sure that if you cut him open, you could pull it out of his insides like a fortune cookie.

“Fine,” Richie says. Anyway, Mike’s parents did die horribly like everyone fucking else in Derry, so it’s probably not the worst thing if Richie tries to cool it on the ‘your mom’ jokes. He _supposes_. “So what’s the plan then?”

Mike spreads some sheets of paper across the desk, smoothing them down.

“Wow,” Richie says. “For all that you wanted to be like ‘oh no, Richie, it’s too dangerous, Richie’ you sure fucking have a hard-on for research. You did all this since yesterday?”

Mike doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring at the papers with his head down. “When I started looking into Pennywise,” he says, “I had the same thought you did.”

_Oh shit_, Richie thinks. “Mike, Mikey,” he says. “I’m sorry. You know I can’t keep my fucking mouth shut.”

Mike raises his head at last, meeting Richie’s eyes. He’s not smiling, but he doesn’t look mad either.

“I wanted to bring them back too,” he says. “I thought I could find a way.” He doesn’t say, _That’s why I agreed to help_ or _if I can’t, maybe you can_. He doesn’t have to. They’re beyond words now, the Losers, for certain things. There’s something stronger between them.

“But you found something,” Richie says. He doesn’t say _your parents would be proud of you_ because honestly, he doesn’t know if they would be. They’d have wanted better for Mike, they’d probably have wanted him to get the fuck out of Derry and have a family and not waste his life researching fucking murder clowns, but there you are. They all accepted the hand they were dealt. It’s not Mike’s fault that the game was rigged from the start.

“I found a bunch of things,” Mike says, “but only one that I think would work.”

Richie walks around the desk, hooks his chin over Mike’s shoulder to glance at the papers. Half of them aren’t even in English, he thinks. He can only see words, here and there: _the Pulse, Mi’kmaq Tribe, Star Wormwood_. Mike shuffles the papers together, stacking them on the desk until they’re in a neat pile.

“A lot of this is myth,” Mike says, “or it’ll potentially bring him back as a zombie, which I personally don’t want and feel like may not work for you either.”

“Well,” Richie says and Mike interrupts to say, “We’re not doing zombies, Rich. You might think - but we don’t want him coming back wrong. Not Eddie.”

Richie thinks about the time Pennywise had worn Eddie’s face and says, “Okay, yeah, fine. I mean as long as you plugged some dumb fucking medical statistics into the voicebox I’m not sure we could tell the difference but no zombies, if you say so.”

“I do say so,” Mike says. “Unfortunately, that mostly leaves us with a blood ritual.”

“As long as it’s not virgin blood, because I’m out,” Richie says. “Hey, what about you? You ever fuck someone in Derry? Weren’t you scared you’d be balls deep and Pennywise would pop up or do you have an undiscovered clown kink you never told me about?”

“If I did,” Mike says, “in what world would I ever tell you that?”

“You dirty bitch,” Richie says. “Good job I didn’t bring a UV light to the sewers. Hey, is that where you went when we all split up? We all thought Pennywise had white facepaint on but really he’d just got a Mike Hanlon facial?”

“Beep beep, Richie. Do you want to hear about Eddie or not?”

“I do,” Richie says immediately. “Of course I do.” God, he really needs to get over talking so much shit when he’s nervous. He’d really thought he was onto something with the stand-up but it turns out having your childhood trauma repressed does wonders for keeping calm. He shouldn’t have stopped for that coffee. He feels about ready to shake out of his skin.

Richie has never needed anything more than he needs to bring Eddie back. It feels how he imagined it felt to be buried under the sewers - just an all-consuming pressure on his chest, all the time. He has to do it. That’s what he doesn’t know if Mike gets - it’s something he doesn’t have the words to explain. There’s just no fucking option to fail.

He brings a hand up in front of his face to inspect the shakes and realises Mike is still looking at him. Richie drops his hand, stands to attention.

“Well?” he says. “Get on with it, otherwise I’ll be fucking ninety by the time Eddie’s back and I don’t know if he’s into wrinkles when it’s not his mom.”

“Blood ritual,” Mike says patiently. “Do you want to sit down?”

Richie does. The shaking’s in his knees, his legs, and he fumbles around to pull out Mike’s desk chair before dropping into it.

“Alright,” Mike says, and taps the top paper in the stack. “Do you remember when we made the blood pact?”

“Yes,” Richie says. “Gayest shit I’ve ever done, and I once jerked off at a drag show. Wait, if they were dressed up as women does that make me straight? I’ve already had one sexuality crisis, I don’t think I’ve got room to pencil another one in my calendar.”

“The scar is gone,” Mike says, ignoring Richie - thank God, blessed sweet Mike, Richie would ignore _himself_ right now if he could but it’s like a compulsion. “But I think - and this is just a theory, this is all just theories, but it’s the best one I’ve got. I think that the connection is still there.”

Richie opens his mouth and thankfully - thankfully! - manages to close it again without saying anything.

“We need everyone to come back,” Mike says. “We need Eddie’s body, and we need to go back to the place where he died.”

Mike doesn’t offer any more details than that, but Richie doesn’t need them. _There’s a chance_, he thinks, even as they agree that Richie has to be the one to get everyone on board. Mike’s done it once, for higher stakes than this. He has no interest in making those phone calls again.

_There’s a chance_, Richie thinks, walking home in a daze and slumping down with his back against the ice box.

“Hey, Eddie Spaghetti,” he says. “Eddie on ice. We’re going to bring you back, you dead motherfucker.” For all that Richie talks shit for a living, it’s actually really difficult having a conversation with a dead guy. Eddie’s not doing his part here.

“Fuck,” he says, suddenly exhausted, and leans back against the ice box to rub his eyes. “You piece of shit, dying on me. You’re going to come back with every fucking disease under the sun and it’s your own fucking fault, pal.”

He bangs once on the side of the ice box so Eddie doesn’t get too comfortable in there, and goes inside to his room to make the first phone call.

-

Bill needs to be first. It’s a toss-up between him and Ben, because if anyone should be able to understand doing what it takes for someone you’ve been unexplainably into for too fucking long, it’s Ben. But on the other hand, this whole thing had started because Bill couldn’t let Georgie be dead. Bill had dragged them all into it; it was Richie’s turn now.

If he can get Bill on board, the rest will be easier. Where Bill goes, the rest of them follow.

Bill answers the phone on the first ring, the first thing he says is, “I still remember you.”

“Yeah, no shit, my name comes up on your phone screen,” Richie says and then, because he tries sometimes not to be a _total_ asshole he says, “I remember you too. I remember when you punched me in the face, motherfucker.”

“You really have to get over that,” Bill says. Because he’s Bill he also says, “Sorry. But at some point I’m going to stop saying sorry.”

He won’t. Richie thinks it’s because he can tell that it’s a joke and not a joke at the same time. Bill - they had all worshipped him. _Richie_ had worshipped him - not just because Bill was cool, but because he had a presence about him, solid and noble and determined to do what he thought he should do. Richie had felt so betrayed when Bill had hit him. He had always thought Bill was the one person who he couldn’t push away - that he could say what he wanted, and Bill would still be there.

Turns out, that was Eddie.

It was fine now. But it wouldn’t ever be the same.

“Apology not accepted,” Richie says instead. “Anyway, uh. What’s up, dude?”

“I was going to ask you that,” Bill says, steady and calm even now. Richie wonders if he can write a fucking ending yet. “You haven’t posted anything in the group chat.”

“Always gotta leave ‘em wanting more, that’s the Tozier way,” Richie says. He can feel his mouth start to run away again. “I’ve been hanging out with Mike, remember him?”

“Yes, Richie,” Bill says. “I remember him.”

Richie’s leg’s shaking now, twitching up and down. He bites the inside of his mouth, flexes his hand. The last time he felt this nervous was right before walking into Jade of the Orient.

“And you, uh,” Richie says. “Remember Eddie?”

He hears Bill exhale, imagines him with the phone pressed to his face, maybe rubbing his eyes with one hand.

“I’ll never forget Eddie,” Bill says quietly. “I miss him every single day. God… I got a paper cut the other day and could hear him telling me it could lead to sepsis.”

“Dude, what a legacy,” Richie says. “Inspiring a new generation of hypochondriacs everywhere.”

Silence, then Bill says, “It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” Richie says, “God, I’m not calling for some kind of spiritual absolvement from O Holy Bill. I’ve got other shit going on, I’m not fucking pining away for him.”

“Pining?” Bill says. “I knew it. I fucking knew it, Ben owes me fifty dollars.”

“You guys bet a fifty? You rich fucks. Talk about how the other half live. Wait, you guys bet on me? My sexuality isn’t a fucking joke, asshole.”

“Why not? Everything else is to you.”

“Okay, you fucking got me there,” Richie says, after a minute. “Whatever, dude. That’s not why I called.”

“I wish you could’ve told us,” Bill says, like Richie didn’t say anything and for fuck’s sake, he’s going to make this into a _thing_. Richie manages to simultaneously hate and be reluctantly touched by it at the same time which is infuriating and also explains a lot about why he liked Eddie so much. “I wish you hadn’t felt like you had to keep it a secret.”

“Well, there was a lot going on at the time, if you remember,” Richie says. “You know, childhood fears, murdered children, insane bullies. Unless you mean the most recent go around which was basically the same, except with bonus hate crimes. So none of that really made me want to wrap myself up in a rainbow flag and celebrate Derry Pride.”

“Derry Pride,” Bill repeats, and they both share a mutual shudder at the sheer fucked upness of the concept. “God, can you imagine?”

“It wouldn’t need Pennywise to be a fuckin’ bloodbath,” Richie says. “Speaking of everyone’s favourite fuckpuppet, he did actually have a few opinions on the whole… thing.”

“The… gay thing?” Bill says. “Wait, or are you bisexual?” He’s so careful and trying so hard and it makes Richie so angry how great his friends are, for fuck’s sake.

“Uh, first of all, I want it on the record that I hate this conversation,” he says. “And… I don’t know. It’s just - only ever been Eddie. Really.” His voice cracks and Richie’s just about ready to throw the phone across the room and he would, if it wasn’t for Bill’s sincerity and the fact that he needs him.

Blood rituals, for fuck’s sake. It couldn’t be a simple ouija board, one and done, could it.

“Okay,” Bill says quietly. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want. I just want you to know that you could have told us - any of us - I promise.”

“Cool, noted,” Richie says. “Now can we move the fuck on to the point of this conversation, or do we have to hold hands and talk about our feelings some more?”

“Well,” Bill says, and Richie groans down the phone. “Just, if you want - help. Dealing with grief, I mean. I know about having to - to learn to live with the death of someone you love.”

  
“Right,” Richie says. “About that.”

-

He explains haltingly, partly because he still doesn’t really know what he’s asking. Mike thinks that there’s a way to bring Eddie back - a blood ritual - the pact. He can hear Bill holding his breath, he lets it out when Richie mentions the importance of the pact and he knows that Bill was thinking about his brother.

They’ve all got people they lost. Richie is trying not to think about Stan, about whether if this works, they could do the same for him.

“Okay,” Bill says, when Richie’s finished. “I’ll come. But I’m bringing Audra this time. It shouldn’t be dangerous - Derry, I mean. Just the - the ritual.” It’s not quite a stutter. But it’s not quite smooth either.

“You’re coming?” Richie moves further back on the bed, the room coming into focus around him. The peeling wallpaper, the damp stains - whoever owns the Town House never came back. Richie guesses he’s technically squatting, but it’s good for as long as he needs it. “I thought I’d have to like… persuade you. Or bribe you, but seeing as you’re making fifty dollar fucking bets, seems like I’d have to rely on selling my body.”

“Save it for Eddie,” Bill says, and Richie can hear the smile in his voice. “Yeah, I’m coming. Either this is real or you’re insane, and either way I’m helping you out. We’re the Losers. That doesn’t end just because Pennywise did.”

-

When Richie was sixteen, he came out to Stan.

He hadn’t been entirely honest with Bill on the phone - it wasn’t just Eddie. Eddie was just the one who made it real. Before then, Richie had known - he’d had a weird crush on the Paul Bunyan statue when he was about eleven. It’s not like he’d actually wanted the statue to come to life, but he’d liked looking up at Paul’s face, kind and bearded. Imagined him becoming like a real person, shrinking down and stepping off the platform.

Imaginary Paul had found Richie funny, had calmed him and made him normal. At eleven, that’s what Richie thought he wanted. When he was twelve, he realised he wanted Eddie.

Richie was gasoline, and Eddie threw the match.

After Paul, there’d been kind of a weird thing for Michael J Fox - okay, not as weird as the Paul thing, but Richie had never really got it. And of course, before Michael but after Paul, there’d been Henry Bowers’ cousin.

That’d lasted about five minutes but Richie still counted it.

God, Henry Bowers’ cousin and the fucked up Paul Bunyan attack in the same day. It was no fuckin’ wonder Richie was repressed. It’s a miracle he hadn’t grown up to be fucking John Wayne Gacy, a perfect Venn diagram of clowns and internalised homophobia.

Jesus. It seemed fucked up that there was actually more than one murder clown in the world.

They’d been hanging out in Stan’s room - somehow, they’d never really ended up going back to the Barrens, never really hung out in a big group again once Bev left, but Richie still saw most of them one on one, now again, even if he saw Stan and Eddie the most. Richie had clung onto Eddie, but he hadn’t needed to with Stan. Stan was just… there.

Richie had so many calm friends, it was no wonder he craved Eddie like Ben craved - well, anything he could eat, the fat fuck. Richie missed him.

“Hey,” Richie said. Stan was lying on his stomach, flipping through a comic book. He’d thrown his bird book out, after Pennywise. Richie had been half watching an old episode of Magnum PI (Stan was the only one of them allowed a television in his room) and trying to work out if he had a crush on Tom Selleck. He didn’t think he did. Something about the moustache was putting him off.

“_Hey_,” Richie said again and Stan rolled his eyes, marking his place in the comic book with a finger.

“What?”

“We’re friends, right?”

“No,” Stan said. “I just let you hang out here because I feel sorry for you.”

“Right, haha,” Richie said hastily. “But also, like, no bullshit, we’re friends?”

“Yeah, Richie, we’re friends,” Stan said. He closed the comic book properly, rolling over on his side. “Are you having a breakdown?”

“No,” Richie said. “I don’t think so. Uh.” He gestured at the screen, feeling out of his depth. “My friend said Tom Selleck’s cute. Weird, right?”

“Your friend,” Stan repeated deadpan, and Richie realised too late that Stan knew both of his friends.

“Bev,” he said. “Bev said it once.”

“Right.” Stan was still watching Richie and Richie couldn’t meet his eyes, watched the rise and fall of Stan’s chest as he breathed instead, the scar on his palm that Richie had too and neither of them could quite remember where they got it from.

Richie’s eyes slid off it as soon as he looked.

“Rich,” Stan said. “If you want to tell me something. I mean. My mom’s brother, my uncle. He lives with his friend. I’ve met him. He’s really polite. So if you - if there’s something…”

“Uh,” Richie said. His heart was beating wildly - maybe this was what having a heart attack felt like. He could feel sweat pooling under his armpits and on his forehead, and he took his glasses off to wipe the bridge of his nose. It was easier and harder, somehow, with his glasses off. If Stan looked disgusted, Richie wouldn’t be able to see.

But on the other hand, there was no barrier between them now.

Richie had thought about telling Stan before but every time he did, he’d felt just about ready to puke. He was going to now, in fact - he could feel the bile crawling up his throat.

“I’m gay!” he said desperately, trying to get it out before the puke hit - and then it did, and Richie threw up in technicolour all over Stan’s bed (and a little bit on Stan’s foot, Jesus, praise the Lord he was wearing socks). Could you come back from that?

Richie retched a little bit, even as Stan was scrambling away from him, pulling his sock off. He braced his hands on the mattress, sweat beading on his face, and thought, _This. This is the most miserable you will ever be_.

And also: _Jesus, I can never fucking tell Eddie, he’ll drown himself in bleach if a fucking drop hits him._

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, once he could talk again. His mouth was burning, either in shame or because of the fucking amount of puke that had ripped out of it. “Fuck, Stan, I’m sorry, I’ll clean it, I’ll go-”

“Okay, this is fucking gross,” Stan said. He was stood across the room, back against the wall and arms folded. “You need to take something for that. Pepto or something.”

“I’m not sick,” Richie said. “I didn’t mean to. I just thought about the way your mom looked last night.”

Stan made a face, twisting his mouth up like he was trying to decide something, and then he said, “I guess you mean my dad now?”

“God no,” Richie said reflexively. “I’m gay but I’m not desperate. Jesus, Stan, your dad? Even _my_ levels of self-hate won’t get me that far.”

“Okay,” Stan said. “Um. Help me get the comforter downstairs? There’s a - a lot here but I don’t want to… God, I’m going to fucking puke if I have to smell this for a second longer. Did you eat your breakfast out of the garbage?”

“Trashmouth Tozier, that’s me.”

“Fucking gross,” Stan said again, but he seemed almost cheerful as they bundled up the comforter with Stan’s single tainted sock inside and took it downstairs to the washing machine.

“What are you going to tell your mom?” Richie asked and Stan shrugged a shoulder.

“I dunno. I won’t tell her about you, don’t worry. I’ll just say I was sick, I guess. I almost was.”

“Because of me,” Richie said and Stan said, “Well yeah, but not like that.”

Richie lagged behind a little bit as they went back to Stan’s room. His stomach still felt pretty angry at him, but the danger had mostly passed and his heart no longer felt like it was about to break right out of his chest. Stan hadn’t seemed angry, or even different - that had been the worry.

It was one thing for Stan to _say_ ‘that’s fine, it doesn’t change anything’. Richie figured all of his friends would probably say that, because they were his friends, and that’s what they were supposed to say to his face. But Richie was worried about what they’d say about him once he left, to each other. Like maybe they wouldn’t want to swim in the quarry with him anymore. Maybe they'd call him a fucking faggot, like Bowers had. Maybe they’d just sort of keep drifting away, like they were already.

The plan had been to wait til he was eighteen and they were all splitting up to go college anyway. Like ‘haha, guess what, I’m super fucking gay’ and then he could just take off, and never see anyone again or deal with any of the consequences. That sounded better than puking up his breakfast on Stan’s foot.

“So,” Richie said, when they were awkwardly arranged on Stan’s now bare mattress. He made a limp wristed gesture. “Do you want to like, talk about boys?”

Stan frowned and reached over to kick Richie’s ankle with his one sock-clad foot. “Don’t be like that.”

“I told you, I’m gay.”

“Yeah, but… it doesn’t change anything. I’m Jewish, but it’s not like I’m suddenly really good at money. I wish we were. My mom doesn’t even bother to cut the black bits out of the potatoes anymore.”

“So what you’re saying,” Richie said, just to make sure it was clear, “is that me being gay is like you being Jewish?”

“Uh, yeah,” Stan said. “Kinda?”

Richie supposed it made as much sense as anything else did. Besides, he was sick of talking about the whole thing. It seemed unfair, that he’d spent what felt like a lot of his childhood being scared by a serial killer monster with a taste for children, and now he had to spend the rest of his life being scared every time he fell in love with someone.

“Well,” said Richie. “I guess at least the gays didn’t kill Jesus, am I right?”

Stan stared at him before kicking out again, catching Richie solidly in the stomach this time. “You’re such a piece of shit.”

Richie managed to squawk out a “I know you are, but what am I?” despite being _kicked in the stomach_, Jesus, what a temper.

“Lame,” Stan said. “If you ever want to be a comedian you’ll probably need a ghostwriter, you’re losing your edge.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Richie snapped. “It’s easy to come up with shit when you haven’t just been beaned in the dick.”

“If your dick’s up there then it’s smaller than my pinky finger,” Stan said. “Or you have a medical problem and you should get it checked out.”

“Oh, so now I’m gay you want to check out my dick? Stan, you know, you’re a great guy, but I’m just not interested, _senor_. Mi dick-a es no your casa. _Comprende_?”

“I’m so glad we’re going to separate colleges,” Stan said wistfully. “I can’t wait to get shot of you. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this shitty town. When people ask me where I’m from, I might even lie just so I never have to talk about Derry again.”

“Way ahead of you,” Richie said, and took a breath. “Top o’the morning to ye, me lad! Me name’s Richie and I’m from Oireland.”

“I did not think anything could be worse than the Spanish and I’m wrong,” Stan said. He rolled over onto his back and Richie took the opportunity to move out of kicking range. “Are you scared about college?”

“I don’t think I’ve got room left to be scared of anything,” Richie said honestly. “Between the clown and the cock-sucking, it takes up a lot of my being-scared time, you know?”

“I just think,” Stan said, “that maybe I’m putting too much pressure on it.” He turned his head to look at Richie, his eyes squinting. “Every time I’ve told my parents how much I fucking hate high school and Derry and - and _anything_, they always tell me, just hold on til college. Everything will be different when you get to college. As if it’s - it’s just magic, and full of different people. But I don’t know if it will be. Bullies go to college too, and assholes. But if college isn’t it, when do I get out?

“It just feels like you get one or the other. I have you guys here, but there’s also monsters and - and fucking Henry Bowers, and Bev’s dad, and people like that. But when I go away, I get out of Derry, but what if I have to give everything else up? Does that even make sense?”

Richie thought about it. It made sense to him, if he tried to think like Stan thought. He thought about Stan’s speech at his bar mitzvah, and how Richie had thought, _yes. It’s not just me_.

“I don’t think anywhere’s like Derry,” he said finally. “In a good way. And yeah, it can take a while to find people. We didn’t get Mike until last, years after you and me. But I think that if you’re living somewhere that isn’t a giant pile of elephant shit, it’s probably, you know. Better.”

“I hope so,” Stan said. Richie had watched him again - his eyelashes illuminated in the sunlight, his hair slightly too long and curling over his forehead and thought,_ it would be so much easier if it was you_.

Apart from the whole straight thing, obviously. And ruining their friendship. And the fact that he wouldn’t give up the way he felt about Eddie for anything.

But if you forgot all that. “Hey,” Richie said. He wanted to say _I love you_ the way that Bill had said it to them after Pennywise, sincere and unembarrassed. But Richie didn’t even say that to his parents, didn’t even like thinking it inside his head. So instead he said, “Want to go to the arcade?”

From the way Stan looked at him, Richie figured he got the message anyway.

-

“Okay,” Bill said, when Richie met him in the entrance hall of the Town House, “there’s no way I’m staying here again. How long will this take? Is there a house we can rent or something?”

“Have you told any of the others?” Richie said and Bill dropped his bags on the floor, jammed his hands in his pockets.

“You asked me not to,” he said simply and Richie grinned, moving forwards into a hug.

“I love you, man.”

“Yeah,” Bill said, slightly muffled by the fact that Richie was pretty much crushing him against him. “Love you too, Trashmouth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise the flashback would make more sense if it was also about Bill, but hey ho here we are anyway.


	3. Ben.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie owes him so much for this. Richie’s going to be collecting on this debt for the entire rest of their lives, which better be a really long time. If Eddie gets knocked down crossing the road after Richie’s done an entire fucking blood ritual, Richie’s going to be pissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: more homophobic/graphic hateful violent language in this chapter, the worst of it taken straight from the book.

“Sorry,” Audra says, smiling. They’re at a Wendy’s, because there’s a silent agreement to never go back to a restaurant in Derry even approaching fancy. Richie’s career is dead in the water as it is, but he still doesn’t need anymore viral videos of him telling a kid to fuck off before he can take advantage of it. Seriously, you can’t buy that kind of publicity. Richie doesn’t feel bad about it at all. Honestly, more people should tell kids to fuck off. Sometimes they need to hear it.

He’s kidding, it’s the parents’ fault. His stand-up is totally not age appropriate for that kid at all. No wonder Richie had assumed he was a hand puppet for Pennywise.

“For what?” Richie says. “Unless you’re apologising to me for growing up here in which case, I get it. Apology accepted. No wonder we turned out the way we did.”

“Um,” Audra says, and glances at Bill. It’s uncanny how much she looks like Beverly - your boy Bill there has a type. Richie’s really looking forward to seeing how uncomfortable he can make everyone once the gang’s all here. “No, I didn’t mean - I just meant, Bill says that your - partner is - in hospital.”

“Oh,” Richie says. He looks at Bill, who is staring at him steadily._ I did you a favour_, Bill's saying. _Don’t fuck me on this_.

“It’s really sad that Eddie’s in hospital,” Bill says. “We’re hoping if we’re all here, we can get him out of the coma.”

“Yes,” Richie says. “So sad.”

“Okay,” Mike says hastily. “That’s enough about us. How are you, Audra? I liked your latest movie, what was it, a sequel to that horror movie?”

“Bill didn’t love the directing,” she says delicately. “Or the choice of ending.”

“Oh, so it actually _had_ an ending,” Richie says. “Maybe Bill should’ve taken notes.”

Audra glances at Bill and Richie recognises that glance, that _why are you friends with this guy again? _glance. He feels sick to his stomach for a moment with the knowledge that it never really goes away, that he’s always going to be too short-sighted, too buck-toothed, too much of a fucking _mouth_ for everyone else.

Then Mike nudges his sugar cookie towards Richie and says in a low voice, “I know it’s not a fortune cookie but I still feel like some blood’s going to spill out if I bite it,” and Richie doesn’t really need anyone else.

“I mean, I’ll have it if you’re worried about that,” he says. “It’s not like there’ll be more blood than there was when I went down on your mom last night,” and cackles.

Audra’s still looking at them, her nose wrinkled into a perfect moue of distaste but Mike and Bill are laughing too, and Richie’s only ever wanted to make his friends laugh.

-

The next choice is between Ben and Beverly. Richie’s pretty sure he only has to call one of them - the benefits of two of your friends dating - but he has to decide which one.

When it comes down to it, it’s an easy decision. There are some things that Richie wants to talk to Bev about in person.

“Hey, Ben,” Richie says, when Ben picks up. “Benjamin. Benny boy.”

“Hey, Richie.” Ben already sounds tired, which is unfair. Ben got to go hang out on a fucking yacht with Beverly. Ben was making out in the quarry like five minutes after a group hug for Richie due to his _grief_ over the death of one of their _childhood friends_. Ben has absolutely nothing to be tired about, as Richie sees it.

“So, I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it,” he starts. “If you’ve been in touch with Bill or Mike or whatever.”

“You know,” Ben says, “when I first found out that I had to go - back - I squeezed lemons into my nose and drank like, a bottle of whiskey.”

“Weird flex but okay,” Richie says.

“I’m just saying that right now, I’m nowhere near a bar or a fruit bowl,” Ben says. “So please don’t let this be anything that bad.”

“Ben, I don’t think anything in our life will ever be as bad as that,” Richie says. “Also, wait, I really have to go back to this. You squeezed lemons in your eyes?”

“I wanted to drink a lot of whiskey,” Ben says. “It’s a trick you can do. Not my eyes, my nose. And it burns so bad that you don’t worry about the burning of the whiskey.”

“I feel like there’s a lot to unpack here,” Richie says. “Like, why you would do that. I just threw up, but at least I didn’t stick lemons down my throat to do it.”

“Richie,” Ben says patiently and Richie says, “Wait, is that what you’re doing on your yacht? I assumed you were having like, sunlit slow motion hot people sex but really you two are just squeezing lemons in your noses and downing whiskey? Is this like that thing where girls started sticking tampons soaked in alcohol up their cooch to get drunk faster?”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Ben says. “I’m happy to have a catch up with you if that’s what you want, but somehow I feel like that’s not why you called.”

“It could be,” Richie says, but it isn’t. He’s not in the habit of calling Ben for a catch up - not that he’s called any of them for a catch up, since Eddie died, but if he did then they both know Ben wouldn’t be the first on his list.

“Richie,” Ben says again. “You want to tell me why you really called?”

“Okay,” Richie says. He starts drawing a circle in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. This shouldn’t still be difficult - Mike and Bill are both on board. Bill came _back_ and brought his wife, too. They’re in this - where Bill goes, the rest will follow.

(Only Richie isn’t sure if that’s true anymore.)

“Okay,” Ben says. “Rich, I’m happy to just sit here in silence with you, honestly I am, but I kinda get the feeling that you want something here.”

Richie says, “I’m gonna throw up,” then, quickly, “No, no, I’m not. Jesus.” He puts the phone down for a second to press both hands to his face, then picks it up again. “I need you and Bev to come back to Derry.”

“_I’m_ gonna throw up,” Ben says. “Don’t tell me It’s back.” He sounds like he’s joking but there’s a strain there, the kind that says _I can’t do this a third time, I’ll die if I have to._ Richie knows that strain. He felt it the first time they stood outside the Neibolt house.

“It’s not back,” Richie says, “at least, I don’t know if it is. Maybe it is, if this is all an illusion and I died in the deadlights, in which case, good fucking luck, guys. Kill that fucking clown.”

“It’s not back,” Ben repeats. “But we need to go to Derry?”

“Eddie,” Richie says. Jesus, he’s done this _twice_ now, how is he still so fucking useless at it? He takes his glasses off this time, and pinches the bridge of his nose. Thinks about Eddie checking WebMD after Richie told him he threw up, reading off a list of possible diagnoses (fear, it’s always fear).

“We need to go to Derry for Eddie.” Ben, God love him, is piecing this together bit by bit. “Okay. Okay. Are you…” He pauses, delicately. “Is everything okay, Richie?”

“No!” Richie says. “Obviously everything isn’t fucking okay! We can’t all make out in a fucking quarry after someone we love gets stabbed through the fucking chest, for fuck’s sake, Ben. Some of us have work to do.”

Ben sighs - it creates static down the phone. “You didn’t tell me you were mad about that.”

“Obviously I was mad about that! Eddie _died_. I shouldn’t need to fucking tell you, Ben, I shouldn’t need to take out a fucking billboard for you to think, ‘okay, maybe when one of my best fucking friends is having a breakdown in some greywater over the death of the_ love of his life_, that, by the way, he couldn’t even fucking _remember_ until about a week ago, so he’s clearly going through a lot, maybe I shouldn’t indulge in a bit of Care Bears group hugging and then go back to making out with my _alive girlfriend._’ Maybe that’s a fucked up thing to do!”

“I mean,” Ben says. “It didn’t really feel like that at the time.”

“You want to tell me what it felt like on your end, Benjamin, because let me tell you, on my end things weren’t exactly peachy.”

“It felt,” Ben says quietly, “like I was so lucky to be alive and that others weren’t. Like I needed to do what I wanted to do _right then_ because God knows I might never get another chance. Like I needed to make sure that I was alive.”

Richie tries not to think about what he would’ve done if Eddie had come out of that alive. Probably dragged him into the car and driven off to adopt a Pomeranian just so Eddie could tell him again to make it sit. God, Richie was so fucking whipped by a dead guy, it was unfair.

“Fine,” Richie says. “You got your fairytale ‘happy ever after’ bullshit. Now I’m getting mine. You and Beverly have to come back to Derry because I’m bringing Eddie back.”

“That sounds - healthy,” Ben says. “Are you sure that’s even possible? It’s been almost a week.”

“Mike says it is, and I trust him,” Richie says. “And Bill’s on board - he’s here already, with Audra.”

“I’m just thinking,” Ben says. “You have a life, Rich. Don’t you want to get back to it?”

“What we had wasn’t a life,” Richie says. “None of us had a fucking life. Bev and Eddie married their fucking parents, for Christ’s sake. You think walking around with a yearbook signed by someone you didn’t even remember for twenty seven years was a life? You got your happy ending, don’t shit on mine.”

“Bringing Eddie back from the dead,” Ben says. He stops, cut off softly with a sigh. “I don’t know why this still sounds crazy considering everything.”

  
“Ben,” Richie says. “Dear sweet fucked up Benjamin. Let me take you on a journey. Imagine we’re in the sewers.” Ben makes a noise. No one wants to imagine they’re back in the sewers. “Now imagine that Beverly just saved your life. You’re relieved. You’re stunned. Maybe this is it, she finally shares your feelings. You’re in love. You’re ready to take down Bozo the Clown and skip into the fucking sunset, hand in hand. Okay? Now imagine a giant fucking monster claw impales her from behind, and not in the Pornhub way.”

“You’re disgusting,” Ben says, but there’s no real heat behind it.

“Now imagine,” Richie carries on, “that she dies in your arms.” He doesn’t mention last words. Just because ‘I fucked your mom’ are the most perfect last words Richie can think of doesn’t mean they’ll work for Ben. “You’d just go back to your depressing fucking architect life and moon over the ashes of a yearbook page?”

“Fuck off, Richie,” Ben says, but he sounds tired. It’s not as fun, when it’s not Eddie. There’s no fire behind it.

Richie had seen the poem. He’d forgotten, obviously, but he’d seen it. Something something winter embers my heart burns there too, and it hadn’t made any sense at all to him at eleven, thirteen (honestly, he’s not totally sure he gets it now he’s forty).

He’d seen it in Ben’s bag and he’d gone home and been surprised that he was still thinking about it, sprawled across his bed. A poem. Who the fuck thought of doing shit like that?

“I’m asking you for one thing,” Richie says. “So it’s cool when it’s Georgie - who you never even _met_, by the way - but when it’s our_ friend_-”

“Richie, enough, I get it,” Ben says. “I’m not - I’m just worried about you. About this. I didn’t even know you - felt that way. About Eddie.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “It was so fucking obvious that Ben and Bev had a pool on it. You were just oblivious because you were too busy mooning after Bev.”

“Wait, even then?” Ben says and Richie goes, “You didn’t have the fucking monopoly on unrequited love, you asshole! Other people were walking around with thoughts and feelings, not just you. A lot of people! We were twelve, dude. Puberty!”

“Is puberty at twelve?” Ben says and Richie wishes he’d done this in person because he wants to - he doesn’t know. Punch Ben in the stomach, except Richie would probably just hurt his hand on Ben’s rock hard abs. It’s so unfair to be beautiful.

“That’s not the point,” Richie says. Jesus, he’s going to have to get sincere. That’s the fucking worst. Richie avoids sincerity as much as he avoids green vegetables. “Look,” he says, trying for earnest and hoping he gets there. Ben is much better at it than Richie is.

“I can’t - go on without Eddie. I don’t mean I’m going to kill myself,” he says hurriedly, “just that I’m bringing him back. One way or another, I have to. He’s my - my Bev,” Richie ends, because it’s the only thing that Ben will understand and Jesus, Eddie would probably throw up himself if he ever heard Richie call him ‘my Bev’.

Richie wants to claw his own tongue out so he never says anything that fucking sappy and ridiculous again. He’ll do it, though, if it means Ben comes to Derry. They need him. They need all of them.

Eddie owes him so much for this. Richie’s going to be collecting on this debt for the _entire rest of their lives_, which better be a really long time. If Eddie gets knocked down crossing the road after Richie’s done an entire fucking _blood ritual_, Richie’s going to be pissed.

“Okay,” Ben says softly. His dumb big brown eyes are probably going all soft as well. Richie’s so mad he could kiss him. “I’m sorry, Rich. I didn’t know it was like that.”

“Well, it is,” Richie says. “So you’ll come? You’ll bring Bev? You can tell her some, but not everything. I think I have to do that myself.”

“We’ll be there,” Ben says. “Just - please tell me we’re not all staying at the Town House?”

-

After that, it seems like a fucking day for being a sentimental piece of shit, so really, Richie can’t help going to visit the kissing bridge.

The inscription on the kissing bridge wasn’t just about Eddie. It was about Richie too, and not in the obvious way. Imagine growing up gay in a conservative ass-backwards town in the middle of fucking nowhere. Then multiply that by one hundred and you’ve got Derry.

It was worse there. Richie didn’t know how he knew it, even then, but it was. He’d seen gay stuff on television, off-hand comments about queers or nancy boys or whatever, but this was different. On television it had a cruel streak - in Derry, it was out for blood.

He’d gone to the kissing bridge once and just read everything on there. _Show me your cock queer and I’ll cut it off you_ and _stick nails in eyes of all fagots (for god!)._ That last one annoyed him the most: Richie had an A average and even for a self-hating queer, he knew how to spell ‘faggot’.

It wasn’t like he’d never seen a gay guy before. There was The Falcon after all, and it didn’t look anything like anyone had said. Richie had never been inside, obviously - he didn’t have a death wish. It wasn’t just the homophobes he was worried about, but the gay guys too - it wasn’t as if he had the most appropriate sense of humour and he knew that he had a mouth on him, and all those things combined with nerves meant he’d either throw up or get thrown out if he ventured in.

Plus, there was always the chance that Bowers and his gang would see him, or literally anyone else. Richie was so fucking happy inside of this closet, you had no idea. He’d even go for a lock on the closet doors if he could.

Now that Bill and Bev had moved away anyway, what was the point in telling people things? Richie hadn’t ever been that close to Mike or Ben and without the glue of O Captain My Captain Bill Denbrough, they didn’t really talk to each other anymore. Mike was holed up in the library pretty much every chance he got anyway and Ben… well, Richie didn’t know what Ben was doing. Probably standing outside Bev’s window and jerking off at the thought of her in a night dress, if that fucking dumb-ass poem was anything to do with it.

Richie didn’t know if Ben had ever sent Bev that poem. Sometimes he thought about it and tried writing one to Eddie in his head but despite Richie having more words in his head than he knew what to do with, he definitely wasn’t a poet.

But the idea of doing _something_ \- of putting it out into the world, that appealed to Richie. Written down somewhere, so he wasn’t completely keeping it a secret. It would make it real, and Richie needed things to be real. Had spent his childhood battling something that didn’t seem real, that people told him wasn’t.

The fucking murder clown, he meant. Not his sexuality.

It was already fading, too. The memories - like a series of doors slamming shut one by one in his mind. Already, he couldn’t really make out Bev’s face, or remember dumb shit like the mantras Bill had repeated or - or how this whole thing had started. The whole Pennywise thing was starting to seem like a series of facts that Richie could recite in his head: _Bill’s little brother had died, kids in Derry went missing, there was a fucked up clown that stole kids._ And even that last one was starting to get a little hazy. Had it really been a clown?

Eddie was inside one of those doors - Eddie and Richie’s feelings for him. ‘Feelings’, God, that sounded so fucking vague. Like Richie was drawing hearts around him and writing _Mrs Richie Kaspbrak_ on his fucking day planner, as if he even had one. He bet Stan did.

So there were two, or maybe three, reasons for the R + E. Richie didn’t want to forget Eddie - but at least wanted to put his fucking _feelings_ out somewhere in the real world in case he did - somewhere they couldn’t be wiped away with the rest of his fucking life in Derry. And he also wanted to say a big fuck you to the assholes who wrote this fucked up graffiti on the bridge.

Try sticking nails in his eyes, you _assholes_. God, he was glad Pennywise hadn’t been able to drag any of _this_ fear out of him, that Richie hadn’t seen the words on the kissing bridge when he was eleven or twelve or however old they’d been. (That was behind another slowly closing door.)

He’d be gaying up the kissing bridge right in front of them, and they’d never even know. Richie couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of Derry, but it was even better if he could leave a piece of his gay-ass self behind first.

“You want to see my cock?” he mumbled, chipping away at the already rotting wood with a pen knife. “Get your measuring tape out, let’s have a contest. Tiny dicked motherfuckers.”

The R + was easy, but he’d only done a stroke or two of the E when he heard someone behind him.

Of course, of _course_ it was Eddie fucking Kaspbrak, because that was the way that Richie’s life worked. He jumped so hard that he actually dropped the knife, which landed point down and stuck in the ground, quivering.

Eddie jumped back about a foot. “You just dropped that knife!” he yelped. “That could’ve landed in your foot, you idiot! Knives cause more disabling injuries than any other kind of hand tool!”

“My other hand tool disabled your mom last night,” Richie said, then, “Wait, maybe I want to say that you’re the only hand tool I can see here. I don’t know. Which is better? No, you wouldn’t know. Your sense of humour isn’t good enough.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie said. His eyes were dark and intense the way they got when he was really mad, and his face was screwed up with anger and all of his attention was on Richie. It was probably fucked up, but sometimes Richie thought he liked Eddie best that way.

(Richie didn’t realise that he thought that a lot, no matter which way Eddie was at the time.)

“Fuck _you_,” Richie said, but there was no venom in it. “You shouldn’t just sneak up behind people who are holding knives. I could’ve stabbed my foot off.”

“That’s what I was _saying_,” Eddie snapped. “You’re such a dumb idiot! Of all the people in the world who should be allowed to hold knives, you’re almost the last one, and it’s only Henry Bowers and his dumb gang who are behind you on the list.”

“You probably _do_ have a list,” Richie said, “and you probably jerk off to it every night. ‘Oh yeah, tell me more statistics about knife injuries, baby.’”

“You don’t - make any - _sense_,” Eddie gritted out. Then he peered around Richie, distracted. “What were you even doing here? As if there isn’t enough dumb graffiti on this bridge.”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Richie countered. “Is that an X-Acto knife? What the fuck, Eds, did you take that from wood shop?”

“Yeah and so what if I did?” Eddie’s voice was raised a little now. That was another thing that Richie liked a lot about Eddie, the way he didn’t back down. Any other kid would’ve denied it or tried to hide it, but Eddie always doubled down on his shit. It was pretty cool. “At least I’m being safe and I won’t end up needing my foot amputated because I cut it off!”

“If I cut it off it wouldn’t need amputating, idiot,” Richie said. “It’d already be off.”

“Not if it was - was hanging on, connected by bone and gristle,” Eddie said, and they both fell silent for a minute to contemplate how gross and cool that would be. “They’d have to amputate it,” Eddie added, late and less visceral.

“Well, it didn’t land on my foot anyway so don’t worry about it,” Richie said. “Why are you here, Eddie Spaghetti? Ready to carve some warnings against mono into the kissing bridge?”

Eddie flushed but he was still gripping the knife. “It’s none of your business.”

Richie wanted to know what Eddie was going to carve into the bridge as much as he didn’t want Eddie to know what he’d been up to, so in the end he chalked it up to a net loss and walked over to the other side of the bridge, sitting down and dangling his feet over the edge.

Eddie joined him after a few minutes and they sat there, together, and Richie tried not to think about the clown, or about what it would be like to be thrown off the side of the bridge. There wasn’t any point, anyway. That was all done with.

“Hey,” Eddie said, eventually. “The sewers. Do you ever think about - what if we’d got lost in there?”

Richie did. When he thought about it, it was just the two of them - they’d got separated somehow, he wasn’t sure. Probably Mike had found his own way out and Ben and Bill and Bev had gone off together, in their weird group of three - anyhow, it didn’t matter when he thought about it.

Eddie and Richie were trying to find their way out and they got lost in all of the tunnels. And then Eddie looked at him, with his face all determined and screwed up and probably his hands on his hips and he said, “You know what we need to do to get out of here?”

They didn’t say it out loud, but they knew they needed to fuck. Richie got a bit hazy here, because he wasn’t exactly sure how two guys went about it, but he was pretty sure that he’d figure it out at college. It wasn’t like he could ask anyone in Derry, anyway, although he thought about it sometimes when he sat on his bike near The Falcon and saw the men leaving. Either way, when Richie thought about it, they managed to figure it out between them.

It was a weird daydream, because Richie hadn’t ever thought about fucking in a sewer. Usually when he thought about Eddie, they were at Richie’s house on his bed, and Eddie kissed him again like he had the first time. Richie knew he was a pussy for not talking to Eddie about that - knew that Eddie probably figured Richie would make him, would bother him until they did talk about it, because he was Richie Trashmouth and he never backed down from anything.

But he had from this, because it would’ve - it could hurt him too much. Richie didn’t like thinking about things that could hurt him. He wanted to believe that he’d left them all down in the sewers.

Anyway, fucking in sewers would be really gross - even Richie could admit that, and they’d probably catch something - so Richie kind of shrugged a shoulder instead and hoped that his face wasn’t bright red and said, “No, not really. Why?”

“I just wouldn’t want to die down there, that’s all,” Eddie had said, and Richie had laughed a little bit and slung his arm around his shoulder and said, “Eddo Spaghetto, I promise I wouldn’t let you. Now whaddya say we ditch these knives and go get a shake?”

-

Richie still doesn’t like thinking about things that hurt him, so the bridge really is a dumb place to be.


	4. Beverly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh my God,” Richie moaned, tipping his head back against the door and not even thinking about how gross it was in there, because - this was worth it, honestly. “You’re really good at this, shit, like, crazy good, like, this could be your full time job, good. It’s not, is it? Because if this is one of those reverse hooking things, if you’re Pretty Woman-ing me then let me tell you now, dude, I’m fucking broke. Oh God. Oh God. Eddie.”
> 
> “My name’s Sam. You said ‘Eddie’.”
> 
> “No, I didn’t,” Richie said, even as he was getting an uncomfortable feeling that maybe he did. “I said… ‘good head-y’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same warnings as usual (internalised homophobia, offensive language) and a sexual encounter in this chapter.

“Once Ben and Bev arrive, the whole gang’s here,” Richie tells the icebox - tells Eddie. “Feels less like a momentous reunion when it’s only been like, two weeks since everything happened, though.”

Eddie’s not saying a lot, but that’s okay. For all that Richie and Eddie had been non-stop back and forth sometimes, Eddie had learned how to listen in a way that Richie envied. Eddie noticed things, and Eddie was brave, and Eddie was a whole bunch of things but ‘dead’ didn’t use to be one of them.

“This might be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done,” Richie says. “And that’s saying a lot. We did a lot of stupid shit as kids. Remember when you started that rock fight? Jesus Christ, I’m surprised you didn’t get completely knocked out.”

Richie waits, like he’s expecting Eddie to answer but Eddie doesn’t. And Richie’s not hearing him inside his head or making up Eddie’s answers or anything - he’d never quite known what Eddie was going to say. There was always the chance it could go either way, thoughtful or asshole or something else besides - that had been the point, really.

“I miss you,” Richie says, before he knows that he’s going to, and his voice cracks. He takes his glasses off, setting them down by his side. “This is so fucking embarrassing, dude, I never used to cry this much.”

That’s a lie though - he’d cried a lot in the summer of ‘85, just not in front of anyone. The doors inside his mind are open now, and he can remember so many afternoons sobbing into a pillow, angry and embarrassed. He’d cried about how scared he was of the werewolf and of Pennywise; about how scared he was of kids getting ripped to pieces and his parents not being able to do anything other than beg him to be in by curfew; he’d cried when he figured out he was gay and he’d cried again after Eddie had kissed him.

He’d even cried his first night at college because he’d been so fucking homesick and already he wasn’t even sure what he was missing. There was something - his friends - but already their faces were blurred and he just couldn’t quite remember - there was something just outside his grasp.

At first, it had been the way Bill had described it to them once - Richie had known facts, but not feelings and certainly nothing concrete. If you had asked him about his childhood friends, he would’ve said he had some, and maybe he would’ve been able to name them all in a pinch.

He might even, at first, been able to say that they called themselves the Losers and that they’d been bullied. But by the time he'd decided to drop out of college just before his second semester, Richie knew he’d had friends - he was pretty sure he had, anyway - and a childhood. But that was the extent of it.

After they found out about Stan’s death, Richie had called Patricia himself, late at night, curled up on his bed at the Town House. He expected the others had done the same - Stan was one of _them_, and the more the memories came back the more they knew that, so an overheard call from Beverly wouldn’t be good enough.

Patricia had been polite and happy to hear from him and so clearly devastated that it made Richie’s heart hurt like a lump of ice in the middle of his chest just thinking about it, even now.

“It’s just-” she’d said, then stopped. Then, “I didn’t even know you all _existed_.”

“Oh,” Richie said, “well, we lost touch-”

“Not that,” she said. “Everything - his childhood. Like he’d just started existing at the age of eighteen, and nothing before that. Do you know he didn’t have any baby photos? I never met his parents, I don’t think - he told me he grew up in Derry, but we never went there.”

The words came out of her like a rush - like she’d just been waiting to say this to someone who might understand.

Richie understood.

“I’ll try to explain,” he said haltingly. “When we grew up - where we’re from - it’s not… very nice. The crime rates in Derry are something like three or five times what they are anywhere else. And when we were growing up, there was, uh, a serial killer.”

Technically, anyway, and it’s taking a lot for Richie not to embellish this with clowns, but it wouldn’t help Patricia.

“He never told me that,” Patricia said, her voice wobbly and Richie had the awful feeling that he was just making this _worse_ for her. He was choosing his words as delicately as he knew how, but it still wouldn’t change the fact that Stanley was gone, and his wife didn’t even know why.

“The - serial killer was targeting children,” Richie said. “There was a curfew, and there were bodies - sometimes on the street - so I think… none of us, we didn’t really… talk about it. We were scared all the time, and after we left… it was easier just to repress it. There wasn’t really - it wouldn’t do any good to talk about it.”

He could hear Patricia breathing raggedly on the other end of the phone.

“I’m sorry,” he said belatedly. “But it wasn’t just Stan. None of us ever - we never talked about it, either.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Patricia said eventually, “But I just - I wish he could’ve _told_ me. I can’t say I’d have understood but just - I’d like to _know_.” She was crying again now. “I hate that now he’s dead and there are things I never even got to know about him. I’m his wife. He loved me. I thought I knew everything.”

“If he didn’t want you to know, it’s not because he didn’t trust you,” Richie said wretchedly, doing his best to try and get through to her. It was the sort of thing that was impossible to explain to anyone who hadn’t been through this, and there were only six other people that had been. “It’s because he didn’t want you - associated with it. Tainted by it. It’s just… easier that way.”

“And your wife?” Patricia said, sniffing a little. “You haven’t told her?”

“Oh, my, uh, partner, grew up with me,” Richie said. (Eddie was still alive then; it was wishful thinking, as if speaking something out loud could will it into existence.) “So, we sort of bonded over the, uh. Trauma.”

After he’d hung up the phone, Richie had rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, spread-eagled across the bed. He couldn’t help thinking that maybe it would be easier, that way. Meeting someone after your memories of childhood had already gone, knowing that you really knew them. Stan had never had to worry that he was forgetting Patricia, hadn’t spent twenty seven years of his life feeling like there was a loose thread somewhere in his mind that he couldn’t quite pull on.

When Bill had asked Richie if he was bisexual, Richie had said that it had only ever been Eddie, and that was true, as far as he knew. The problem was that Pennywise had really fucked the whole ‘figuring out his sexuality’ thing up. Richie honestly wasn’t sure sometimes - he’d thought he’d been interested in girls, when he was younger, in a curious way, and he’d been with boys in college.

But he hadn’t been able to remember most of who he’d been attracted to in his childhood. And since he’d dropped out of college, Richie had been trying to find his way back to Eddie, whether he could remember him or not. So it had only been guys, and not a lot of them. There’d always been something missing - a lack of interest on Richie’s side, basically. The fact they weren’t Eddie.

It was embarrassing, if he thought about it too much. Eddie hadn’t been pining away for him - Eddie had married Myra, which, okay, there was a whole load of other stuff to unpack there, sure. God, Eddie was _dead_ and Richie was still ready to do whatever the fuck he wanted, no questions asked.

Richie was stupid for Eddie, always had been, even when he couldn’t remember him. Sad but true.

There’d been a really embarrassing moment during his first BJ in the men’s toilets at a dingy comedy club - so bad, that Richie kind of wished it could fall into the memory hole he’d had about Derry. Like Jesus, for someone who’d forgotten most of his childhood, Richie still had way too many awkward moments to remember when he was trying to sleep.

(He’d thought about turning them into comedy, before the ghostwriter. Now he was thinking about it again.)

Richie had just come off stage after what had been an acceptable set - he still hadn’t quite got the hang of ‘good’, but he felt like he was getting closer. The first few times he’d tried, he’d absolutely bombed - turned out no one really wanted you to do Voices in 1994. Or at least, not the Voices that Richie thought he could do.

But once he ditched the Voices and started calling himself Trashmouth - it made it easier, the persona, like he could be different, like it wasn’t all of Richie up there - things started getting better then. It was still hard, not having a childhood to draw on - other comedians talked a lot about growing up, but Richie could never really think of anything interesting that’d happened to him and besides, he didn’t really want to talk about Derry anyway.

“Hey.” Richie turned from where he was leaning against the bar. There was a guy next to him - a bit shorter than him, with dark hair. He had a dark green sweater on with his sleeves rolled up - slightly weird choice for a hot, sweaty club, but Richie was sort of into it.

“Hi,” Richie said and, after a moment’s thought, stuck his hand out. “Richie Tozier.”

“Sam,” the guy said. He shook Richie’s hand like that wasn’t weird. Richie always felt a little off-center when he came off-stage - like he had to realign himself with the real world, where he _wasn’t_ Trashmouth and everything he said _wasn’t_ followed by applause. It wasn’t as good as being on-stage was, but you couldn’t feel like that all the time.

“Well, nice to meet you, Sam,” Richie said, and turned back to the bar to flag down the bartender. “What’re you having?”

He didn’t mean to flirt - Richie couldn’t flirt on purpose even if he wanted to, unless pulling pigtails counted. But he found it easy to talk to people at the club, because there was the common ground that they probably already liked him, that if they had seen him on-stage it meant that they already _wanted_ to talk to him and also, that they wouldn’t be completely put off by his sense of humour which, honestly, put most people off.

But it was possible that this easy friendliness that he fell into when off-stage after a set could be construed as flirting. Just - not on purpose.

“Uh, I’ll have a screwdriver,” the guy - _Sam_ \- said. Richie wasn’t actually old enough to drink yet, but if he’d done a set, they usually didn’t really care.

“Sure,” he said, ordering a screwdriver and a beer. He suddenly had a flashback to something - _gin and __prune juice_ \- but he couldn’t have told anyone why, if they’d asked. “So, uh… ya come here often?”

He’d meant it as a joke but it came out sounding like more than that, and that was reinforced by the way Sam was looking at him, dark-eyed and intense like he was trying to figure something out. _Tell me about it_, Richie thought. He felt like he spent most of his life trying to figure something out and not quite succeeding.

“Not that often,” Sam said. “I’ve seen you before, though. On stage, I mean.”

“Oh,” Richie said. “Thanks. I mean, assuming you liked it. If you hated it then first of all, weird of you to come back for more, dude.”

“No, I liked it,” Sam said. “I actually thought you were really good.”

Richie looked at him a little longer and made his mind up. He put his drink down on the bar and pushed his hair back, hoping Sam wouldn’t notice how much his hands were shaking.

“Uh. Sorry if I’m reading this wrong, but do you want to get out of here?”

“Actually,” Sam said (and he’d reminded Richie of someone, for a minute, but the next thing he said got rid of all that), “I was thinking you might want to get into _there_.” He nodded his head towards the bathrooms and Richie could almost feel his eyes bug out.

Yeah, he knew this kind of shit _happened_, but it was one thing to know about this in theory and another thing to actually do it. Like, Richie was into guys _in theory_ but he didn’t know what he was actually doing.

(It was really unfair, he couldn’t help thinking, that being not-straight meant he essentially had to lose his virginity twice. Like, which asshole came up with _that_?)

It was such a cliche too, right, going into the men’s toilets. But cliches existed for a reason, and Richie - well, actually Richie was a big fan of not doing things that scared him, call it self-preservation or whatever, but here’s the thing - he wasn’t exactly meeting a lot of hot single guys and when he was, there was something missing. So if he wasn’t dating, and wasn’t planning to have any fucking romantic rose-petals on the bed moments, this was probably his best shot.

Plus the guy - sort of reminded him of someone. Not personality-wise - the thing about the toilets was wrong, something to do with germs, but Richie couldn’t quite work out how - but something about the eyes and the sweater was really… Maybe Richie just had a type. People had types, after all.

“Sure,” Richie said. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”

The toilets were fucking gross because of course they were. Richie didn’t even want to think about why or how the floor managed to be both sticky and wet at the same time. There were two metal cubicles with battered doors and the rest of the bathroom was covered in those white tiles that seemed more in place in like, public showers.

Sam led him to one of the cubicles and Richie had time to think _oh, you’ve done this_ before before Sam pushed him back against the door and slid to his knees.

“Well, better you than me,” Richie said. “You might want to burn those jeans when you get home because-- _nngh, _holy shit_, wow_.”

Sam grinned up at him and said, “I wondered if this would shut you up.”

It didn’t. Richie just went from making sense to babbling like an insane person. He’d never done anything like this before - the few girls he’d tried making out with hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near his dick with their mouths - and it was - well, it was ‘nngh, holy shit, wow’, to be honest.

“Oh my God,” Richie moaned, tipping his head back against the door and not even thinking about how gross it was in there, because - this was worth it, honestly. “You’re really good at this, shit, like, crazy good, like, this could be your full time _job_, good. It’s not, is it? Because if this is one of those reverse hooking things, if you’re Pretty Woman-ing me then let me tell you now, dude, I’m fucking broke. Oh God. Oh God. _Eddie_.”

Sam pulled off with a pop and looked up at Richie. His mouth was red and swollen and Richie frowned, in spite of himself.

“Dude, you look so hot right now, but is this the time for a photo op? Why’d you stop?”

“My name’s Sam.”

“Right,” Richie said. It was hard to make sense or even follow what little conversation this was when his brain felt like it’d been scrambled through his dick but he was doing his best. “You said.”

“_You_ said ‘Eddie’.”

“No, I didn’t,” Richie said, even as he was getting an uncomfortable feeling that maybe he did. “I said… ‘good head-y’.”

Sam sat back on his heels now, and Richie was beginning to feel that a) he was about to get a severe case of blue balls and b) that he really didn’t want to have his dick hanging out for this chat.

“I’m pretty sure you said ‘Eddie’,” Sam said evenly and Richie shrugged a shoulder, suddenly antsy.

“I don’t even know an Eddie.”

“I know that I’m just some guy you picked up,” Sam said, and oh Jesus, he really wanted to carry on talking about this. Richie didn’t get it. _He_ definitely wanted this to be over, plus he was very slowly getting soft. “But at least don’t say someone else’s name and then don’t _lie_ to me about it.”

“Oookay,” Richie said. He finished tucking himself back in and zipped up. “So I feel like this is weird for both of us and you really don’t believe me about any of this, so what I’m going to do is… leave. Cool?” He’d been edging towards the door handle as he said that, so it was easy to pull the door open and swing himself out.

He caught a glimpse of Sam’s surprised expression as he left and okay, maybe closing the door behind him - and closing Sam back into the cubicle - hadn’t been the best thing but it _had_ been on instinct and mostly, Richie just wanted to get the fuck out right now. Could he ever go back to the club?

Also, could he put something about this in his next set? Not the bit about ‘Eddie’, obviously, but maybe he could mine something out of the situation in general.

It wasn’t until he was back in his dorm bed that Richie realised he’d forgotten what name he’d even said.

-

This time, they go to T-BONES for some shitty steak - all of them who are left, Mike, Richie, Ben, Bill, Beverly. Even though it’s only one less than last time, it feels like more.

“So,” Richie says, slipping into the seat next to Ben. “What’s your excuse for Audra not coming? Is she sick of staying home alone?”

“No, she just doesn’t want to have to hang out with you again,” Bill says, and rolls his eyes. “She’s not exactly enticed by Derry’s best restaurants. She’s happy to stay in the room and order room service and try and learn her new script.”

It sounds pretty fucking boring if you ask Richie, but Audra’s Bill’s wife and not his, so it’s not like he gives a shit. He’s keeping his own person of interest in a fucking icebox chained shut, after all. Also, he should maybe unlock that, so Eddie doesn’t wake up trapped - if he wakes up. _When_ he wakes up, he mentally amends. They’re almost there now.

“Here’s what we have to do,” Mike says, once the food has arrived. “It’s called the Ritual of Blood.”

“Imaginative,” Richie says and Bev squeezes his hand.

“Beep beep, Richie.”

“It’s to do with our power as a collective,” Mike says. “The blood pact strengthened that - and our power was heightened even more by defeating It. If we can draw on that - on our love and belief and connection - we might be able to bring them back.”

Bill blinks. “Them?”

“I think,” Mike says, “we can bring Stan back too. If we want to.”

“If we want to?”

“Well,” Mike says gently. “He chose to die.”

“He chose to die so he wouldn’t have to fight the murder space clown,” Richie points out. “It’s gone now. We did it this time. _Eddie_ did it.”

“Well, I’ve seen Buffy,” Mike says, a little defensively, “and her friends pulled her out of heaven when she didn’t want to go. I don’t want to take Stan away if he’s happier.”

It feels like a punch to the gut. Richie had never once considered that maybe Eddie was _happier_ being dead. He’s been so selfish this whole time, wanting Eddie back with him. He pushes his chair back from the table abruptly, standing up.

“Rich,” Bev says, reaching out for him, but Richie shakes her off.

“I’m going to go get some air.”

He stumbles out of the restaurant blindly, not knowing where he’s going, just - out. It’s not long before there’s a hand on his shoulder - of course someone would follow him. As if they’d just let him leave alone, in Derry, even now.

“We’re bringing them both back,” Bill says. “That’s not a question.”

Richie doesn’t look up. He’s sitting on the curb now, arms on his knees, looking down at his feet. “What if Mike’s right?” he says. He can’t look at Bill while he says it - he can’t look at anything, because everything reminds him of Eddie. If they don’t do this, Eddie won’t get to see the stars again. He won’t get to sit on a curb. Not that Eddie would sit on a curb - he’d probably lose his mind about the amount of like, bacteria on there or something, but at least he’d have the option.

Richie had never once thought that Eddie wouldn’t want to come back.

“First of all,” Bill says, “I didn’t travel all the way back to fucking _Derry_ just so you could change your mind based on Mike Hanlon’s recollection of an episode of Buffy.”

“I remember it too,” Richie says miserably. “It was the musical episode.”

“Mike just wants to make sure that we’re doing the right thing,” Bill says. “Because he cares about us. _ All _ of us.”

“I know,” Richie says. “But I hadn’t even thought about it. What if Eddie _ does _ want to stay dead?”

“Then it’s tough shit,” Bill says. “We’re the Losers. You think we just get to die when we feel like it? Not a chance.”

Richie thinks it over. It shouldn’t help, really… but it does.

“Thanks, Big Bill,” he says. “But I think I still need a minute.”

“Okay,” Bill says. He stands up and brushes down his pants before awkwardly patting Richie on the head. “I’ll see you in there, Trashmouth.”

“Sorry, did you just pat me on the head?” Richie says, but he’d kind of liked it. Bill is so free with his affection now, now that he doesn’t have to worry that any of them will be taken away from him like Georgie was. He’s all about the ‘I love you’s and hugs that go on too long to be ‘bro hugs’. They’d all been close that summer, always clambering in and out of hammocks together or napping together in piles on the floor of the clubhouse on summer days (none of them ever felt safe enough to sleep alone at night) but something had changed after the first time they’d faced It.

Now Bill is comfortable again, and Richie doesn’t think he’ll ever get sick of seeing Bill free with his easy affection.

Bill goes back inside and Richie sits hugging his knees for a few minutes, staring at the parking lot. There are footsteps behind him and Richie raises his head to say, “What, did you decide you want to pat my other head? I’m flattered, dude, but your mom already got there last night.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” says a female voice, and Richie tilts his head back to see Bev, arms wrapped around herself to try and stay warm in the night.

“In my defence, I clearly thought you were Bill,” Richie says, as she sits down next to him. “Although that’s not to say I’d turn you down. It might be a little awkward with Ben though, unless we invited him as well, which, not opposed to.”

“You’re right,” Bev says, before Richie can say anything else. She clearly has something on her mind, and it’s never been like Bev to dance around the point. Once she’s made up her mind to do something, she wants to do it as soon as possible. Richie respects that, even if he’s more Team Procrastinate Difficult Conversations Forever. “I know why you called Ben and not me. I know what you want to say, and you're right.”

Richie says, “Did you see _that_ in the deadlights too?” and Bev’s eyes fill with tears. She never used to cry - when they were younger, Bev was the toughest chick Richie had ever met. The toughest _person_, full stop - she could’ve kicked all of their asses.

Sometimes he doesn’t recognise this grown-up Bev; quick to cry, glancing at Ben, like she can’t stand up straight without him. It’s not - they all have their methods and Bev’s been through as much as any of them, maybe even more ‘cause Richie doesn’t know what he’d’ve done, growing up with a creepy fucking father figure like that and then getting - well, they all know what happened with Beverly’s husband, even if she never said so.

Richie had thought about finding out where he lived once or twice and wrapping his own belt around his fist but he hadn’t, in the end, because Bev hadn’t asked him to. She’d known, though. If she’d wanted, she’d only had to hint at it. They’d all have been there.

They say living well is the best revenge, so maybe fucking male model Ben Hanscom is the equivalent of that. Richie’d love to show up to his college reunion with Ben on his arm, and not just because right now his only other option is a rotting corpse in an ice box.

(That’s for dramatic effect - Richie really hopes Eddie isn’t rotting yet. He’s going as fast as he can with all this.)

“I saw it coming,” Bev says. “I could’ve stopped it.” She bites down on her fist to stop herself from crying, staring at him with wide eyes. “I’m so sorry, Rich. It’s my fault. I should have saved him.”

The whole conversation is going so far from where Richie expected it to go that he just goggles at her for a moment, open-mouthed.

“Bev-”

Bev’s eyes are welling up with tears but she’s still staring steadily at him. “It was my fault,” she says again and Richie shakes his head.

“It wasn’t,” he says. “I was an asshole, saying that to you - I was in the deadlights too - I should’ve pushed him out the way, I could’ve saved him too.”

“You had seconds to realise what you’d seen,” Bev says. “I had _years_.”

Richie had blamed everyone at first, including himself. It was Bill’s fault, forcing them to go in early, unprepared - it was Ben’s fault, Mike’s, Bev’s - but really, Richie can admit to himself now that it hadn’t been anyone’s fault other than Pennywise.

They are all Losers, together. That’s important. It’s not Bev’s fault, just like it’s not really Richie’s - at least, he’s trying to believe that. Blaming his best friends isn’t going to bring Eddie back, and Richie didn’t spend twenty seven years forgetting them just to lose them once he’s got them back again.

Bev’s still the toughest person Richie’s ever met. _That_ hasn’t changed. It’s just taken a different form.

“Ben told me what you’re trying to do before we came,” she says. “I’ll help. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“We can bring him back,” Richie says, a little stunned at this easy acceptance, missing with all of the others. Bev nods.

He hadn’t expected to see the same light in her eyes that Bill and Mike had - had thought, stupidly, that Bev hadn’t lost anyone the same way they had. Only her father, and nobody was exactly ready to sign up to bring _that_ motherfucker back. But then Bev says, “Stan?”

“Mike thinks so, but we don’t have his body,” Richie says. “I don’t know how we’d explain it to Patricia.”

“I’m so sorry, Rich,” Bev says again. “With Stan - I wish I’d done something but I didn’t even remember til we were back. But Eddie, I’d seen it.” She reaches out, grabs his hands and grips them hard enough to hurt. “It was my fault. I’m in this to the end.”

One day, Richie will learn not to underestimate Beverly Marsh.

“It’s not your fault,” he says finally. “It’s nobody’s fault except the fucking stupid sloppy bitch who stabbed him. Bev,” Richie says, as solemnly as he can. “You are a lot of things, but you are not a sloppy bitch.”

Bev laughs through a sob, her eyes streaming.

“You couldn’t,” Richie says. He has to make sure that she knows this. “We were all trying to keep ourselves alive. You couldn’t have saved him.”

Bev’s mouth is a thin white line and she shakes her head, resolute, and how has Richie never known that she’s been carrying this around with her all this time?

“I could have,” she says. “But I didn’t. This time, we will.”


	5. Eddie.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Eddie died,” Richie says. “Am I crazy for thinking we can do this?”
> 
> “Love doesn’t die,” Ben says.
> 
> “Eddie’s pretty dead, dude,” Richie says. “His body’s literally decomposing in the ice box.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the homestretch now

They meet at Mike’s apartment. He hasn’t found anyone to rent it, but he says that the board was included in his librarian job so as he’s leaving one, it doesn’t matter that he’s leaving the other.

“Technically,” he says, “we’re not supposed to still be here. But Richie kind of delayed my plans.”

“Fuck yeah I did,” Richie says. “Sorry you’re still stuck here though, Mike. I guess we can say that your leaving plans are… overdue.”

“Wow, I didn’t think that joke could get any worse but hearing it a second time proved me wrong,” Mike says. “Although if you manage to not throw up everywhere this time, it might be a bit of an improvement.”

“I make no promises,” Richie says.

“Just think,” Bev says, her eyes shining. “Next time we’re back here, Eddie might be with us.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m bringing Eddie back to Mike’s apartment,” Richie says and Bill says, “Oh, like it’s any worse than keeping him locked in an ice box.”

“I can’t believe you told them, you traitor,” Richie mutters and Mike shrugs.

“All this shit talking my apartment is not making me regret it.”

“Guys,” Ben says quietly. “I get that we’ve missed each other, but we’ve got a job to do here. And while I’d love - really love - for us to hang out properly, without raising the dead or killing a monster, that’s not why we’re here.”

“Yeah, we should really do that someplace that isn’t Derry,” Bill chimes in. “We’ve been to all the restaurants here already and I don’t think any of them want us back.”

“I only called a kid an asshole one time!”

“_Guys_,” Ben says again. “We have a job to do. Also Richie, it’s been twice now.”

Bev rolls her eyes, but she reaches out to squeeze Richie’s hand.

“You’re going to see Eddie again,” she says softly, and Richie experiences a momentary jolt of terror. He’s been so caught up in getting everyone together, in talking them all into it, that for a moment he’d lost sight of what they were actually doing.

He’s planning to bring _a dead guy back to life_. And yeah, it’s not just _any_ dead guy, but...

“Eddie died,” Richie says. “Am I crazy for thinking we can do this?”

“Love doesn’t die,” Ben says.

“Eddie’s pretty dead, dude,” Richie says. “His body’s literally decomposing in the ice box.”

“Stan’s body is the one we’ll have to think about,” Beverly says. “We don’t even know where it is. Was he buried? He’ll want to go back to Patricia. How would we explain that to her? Any of it?”

“Listen,” Richie says. He makes his mind up. For some reason, other people having misgivings is all it takes to pull him back into being ride-or-die (literally) for Eds. “That all sounds like problems for future Losers. Let’s let them worry about it and focus on present Losers, who mostly want to find out if we can even _bring_ Eds back before we go full necrophilia on Stanley.”

“Necromancy,” Mike says.

“Oh,” says Richie. “What did _I_ say?”

“Necrophilia,” Mike says. “Please don’t fuck dead Stan.”

“I wasn’t planning to, but that sounds like a challenge,” Richie says and it’s worth it for the outcry that follows - Ben’s groans, Beverly laughing into her hands, Mike rolling his eyes and Bill saying, “Beep beep, Richie,” through a smile. They’re _his_, and he won’t let himself forget them again.

“Whether you’re crazy or not, we’re too far in to back down now,” Mike says, “although for the record, yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re crazy.”

“Crazy _hot_,” Richie says. “Nah, I’m just kidding, we all know that Ben is the crazy hot one here. Seriously, Haystack, how many abs do you have now? Ten? Twelve? Do we need to stage an intervention?”

“Here’s what we do next,” Mike says, before everyone can go off track again. “We had enough power with six. If we believe enough, we should have enough power with five, too.”

“Enough power to raise someone from the dead,” Ben says. “Last time, we killed It. That’s different.”

Richie isn’t sure which would need more power. Killing a murder clown and raising someone from the dead kind of feels like comparing apples to oranges, if he’s being honest.

“We go into the sewers,” Mike says. “We cut our hands. I’ll say some words and we summon the power. Then we all have to think very hard about what we want.”

“Wait,” Richie says. “So if I think about a pony instead, I could get one?”

“Not if everyone else is thinking about Eddie,” Mike says. “First of all, you’d create a fucked up abomination and secondly, this is a ritual to bring someone back, not to get you the Christmas present you always wanted.”

“So if I had a _dead_ pony,” Richie says and Ben says, “Beep beep, Richie.”

It’s not - he’s obviously not going to think about anything else other than Eddie. It’s just that the nerves are beginning to pool in his stomach.

He can’t imagine what it would be like to be brought back from the dead. He can easily imagine what it would be like to be dead, has thought about dying a thousand times over since Mike called them all back. Richie had expected that he would die, in the fight - he kind of expected he’d die being a meatshield for Eddie, which would be humiliating but alright, he thinks.

After Eddie died, Richie wished it had been him instead. It was unfair - having Eddie around meant that Richie kind of got to deal with his childhood trauma. He got to understand that part of himself.

None of them really knew at the time how fucked up the whole thing was, with Eddie and his mother. Richie thought he’d understood, as a child, but he’d viewed Mrs Kaspbrak the same way that he’d viewed Paul Bunyan or the werewolf - another monster created by Pennywise. It’d been funny to tease Eddie about, which was fucked up. Maybe if Richie had realised at the time how bad it was, Eddie could’ve done too.

Richie knows about Munchausen by proxy. He’d heard about it in the news about some other girl but he hadn’t remembered until he’d remembered Eddie. None of them had really _known_, not properly - but they should have.

Beverly’s dad had been a piece of shit and she’d grown up to marry him - Eddie had married his mom. They were the same, really; just because Eddie’s mom hadn’t beat him or literally hurt him didn’t mean that she hadn’t _hurt_ him.

But Eddie had never been able to get over that - had never been able to leave Myra on his own terms. It’s just another thing that Richie’s taken away from him - another thing that he should’ve been able to save him from.

So even if Richie doesn’t end up getting all happily ever after with Eddie, it’s fine. He doesn’t - he won’t put those expectations on Eddie. He’s not bringing Eddie back to be a fuck doll or whatever, and Eddie won’t owe him anything. It’s just giving Eddie a chance. It’s righting some of the wrongs that Pennywise had left in the world.

-

They have to get Eddie’s body back down into the sewers. Richie can _feel_ the way they’re all looking at each other even as he pretends not to notice - no one wants to go back into the sewers. Fine, then they shouldn’t have let Eddie die down there.

“It’s gone,” Bill says, for everyone’s benefit. “We killed It.”

But they’d thought that the first time…

Richie wants to be brave, but Eddie had always been the brave one, climbing into the sewers with a broken arm. Or Stan, who had been frightened of getting dirty, of letting them down, more than he had ever been afraid of Pennywise. Still, he can’t back out now, even if he wants to - and he doesn’t. Or rather, he does - but he can’t.

Coming all this way and then backing out, letting Eddie stay dead because Richie’s too scared to go into the sewers one last time.

Besides, Eddie would absolutely lose his shit. “You left me down here, asshole! How do you think _I_ feel?” It’s a great point, Dead Eddie. There’s no arguing with that.

“Okay,” Richie says. The house on Neibolt is gone now - crumbled into the ground, but it left a big hole behind it. Richie’s already been back once anyway, to get Eddie’s body - it feels more like a dream now than a memory. He’d been so fucking insane with grief that it had been like he was a zombie. It hadn’t felt like a _choice_, not like this does, right now.

Richie takes his glasses off to rub his eyes. He remembers holding Eddie’s hand before they went into the sewer, and telling him that he was brave, he just didn’t know it.

Bev’s looking at him, arches an eyebrow when he catches her eye. “Let’s kill this fucking clown?”

“Actually, this time I was thinking we could measure dicks,” Richie says, slipping his glasses back on, and Bev snorts out a laugh.

“You wish, Trashmouth. We all know mine’s biggest.”

“C-come on, Rich,” Bill says, and they all pretend not to notice the stutter. Honestly, Bill’s lucky if a stutter’s all he’s got, looking at this place - Richie’s pretty sure he’s about to vomit. “Say s-something inspiring.”

“Okay,” Richie says again, staring at the remains of his childhood. “Let’s bring this fucker back.”

-

The sewers are dark, even with flashlights. Richie kind of wishes he’d brought a floodlight but there’s no way of hooking it up. None of them say anything the long climb down. Richie - God help him - has brought a fanny pack for Eddie because he’s _that_ kind of asshole. It’s got wet wipes, because he was worried about Eddie feeling dirty, and an inhaler and honestly, Richie might just carry it all the way back and never tell anyone because it’s fucking embarrassing, is what it is.

The bottom of the tunnel is filled with rubble, but Richie can recognise the route he took by the blood stains on the rocks.

Ben notices them first, his eyes going wide and says, “_Richie_.”

“Oh, fuck you, dude,” Richie says, “like you didn’t pull Bev out of a river of blood or whatever that fucking was.”

“But your hands,” Bev says. Her own hands are over her mouth and Ben has one arm around her, like he’s realising all over again what he could lose. “I saw, but I didn’t think-”

“It’s fine!” Richie says. “I didn’t even feel it!” He spent the week with Eddie pushing him away as much as he could, just so Eddie would never guess, and hoping desperately that maybe Eddie would make the first move. This is now, Richie suspects, the first move to end all first moves.

“You know,” Bill says quietly, “when we bring him back, you’re going to have to tell him.”

“No I’m not,” Richie says automatically and Bill huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah, man,” he says, putting a hand on Richie’s arm. “You are.”

“Once again,” Richie says, “you’re getting caught up in future problems. I don’t have to say shit to him while he’s dead.”

“Rich-”

“That’s not why I’m bringing him back!” Richie snaps. It rings out in the quiet of the tunnels, and everyone stops to look at him. “I mean - yes, I’m in love with him, _obviously_. But - he’s not… He doesn’t have to do anything,” Richie says. “I don’t want him to even know. He deserves - I want him to -”

He stops, unable to find the words and terrified he’s going to start crying again, knee deep in fucking gray water.

This time it’s Ben who says, “Don’t worry. I get it.”

Richie says, “You do?” and he’s only crying a little bit, and everyone’s nice enough not to mention it.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Your feelings are yours. You can feel however you want. Doesn’t mean anyone’s gotta feel the same way.” He looks at Bev and Richie can practically hear the _January embers_ ringing in his ears. “Sometimes,” he says, “it’s just nice to love someone.”

Richie would never call it _nice_. It’s fucking agonising and humiliating, is what it is.

“But,” Bev says. “Sometimes the other person can surprise you. Don’t write Eddie off just yet, Rich.”

“As nice as this all is,” Mike says dryly, “we’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Oh shit!” Richie says. “We forgot to bring the body!”

“It’s okay,” Mike says immediately, holding his hands up to calm Richie like Richie’s a fucking deer or something. A stag, whatever the male version is. A moose. “Don’t panic. He’ll be returned to his own body. As long as we know where he is, and he’s not buried six feet under…”

“He’s in the ice box!” Richie says. “It’s padlocked! He’ll freeze to death! Oh my God, I’ve fucked it up already, we have to go, we have to go get Eddie-”

“Richie,” Mike says. “You unlocked it. Remember?”

Slowly, Richie’s heart stops pounding and he can hear again over the roaring in his ears. Mike’s right - he’d done it after T-BONES.

“I didn’t check,” Richie says. “What if someone stole his body?” He can see the looks that the others are giving each other. “This is Derry! It wouldn’t be the most fucked up things to happen this _month_.”

“No one stole the body,” Bill says. “And if they did-” he starts laughing “t-they’re going to have a sh-sh-shock when Eddie wuh-wakes up!”

“But I brought him stuff,” Richie says. “His inhaler…”

Bev puts a hand on Richie’s arm. “You can give him it when we get back,” she says. “It’s Eddie. He’ll go straight into the Town House and try and figure out what’s going on. I know it’s not ideal, but he’s been - dead - for a few days. We wouldn’t have been able to bring him down here anyway, not without risking, you know.”

“Bits falling off,” Ben says helpfully, then seems to realise what he’s said, and winces.

Richie sighs loudly. “I _do_ want Eddie’s bits attached.”

“I really don’t remember us talking this much the other times,” Mike says, and it’s that, more than anything, which makes it real.

Pennywise is dead.

The usual sense of foreboding - the invasive, bone-deep sense of _wrong_ and fear - none of that’s here anymore. Richie’s still convinced he’s going to shit himself, because this is still where Eddie died, where they fought It twice, this is why Stan killed himself and Richie forgot himself and it’s still the headline act in his nightmares every single night.

But there’s nothing here to be scared of, except what there used to be.

The others know it too, and Bev steps forward and grabs his hand on one side, Bill on the other.

“Show us the way,” Bev says. Eddie had been their navigator - Eddie was Richie’s north star. Wherever Eddie is, Richie knows it. He starts walking.

-

They had seen each other once, after they’d both left Derry. After they’d forgotten each other. Richie hadn’t known it until he’d walked into the Jade of the Orient and had a ‘I know this guy’ moment twice over, like double vision coming into focus.

It was Eddie, his life-long embarrassing unrequited crush, sure. But it was also the guy from the comedy show.

Richie’s first tour had been a whirlwind. It had barely even been a tour, as much as it was him and Steve in a beat-up old junker and staying at shitty motels, but it had been amazing. They’d done college campuses, and one college had made Richie rise up onto the stage through a cloud of smoke and then he’d _killed_ it, and he still doesn’t know if there’s anything as good as that.

But the problem had been - like, it was cool and all, but there had been a moment where the smoke had reminded him of something. He’d been a bit disoriented and the whole set had gone by in a bit of a blur, like something bigger had reached down and used him as a Richie-puppet. Which was _fine_, like, it was better than bombing on stage, and Richie was probably reading too much into it - everyone got nervous and blacked out on stage, and at least he hadn’t puked - but he’d still felt a little weird when the applause started and he realised, belatedly, that it was over.

Richie stumbled off stage and towards the bar. He made it a rule not to drink before his shows - he’d learned that when he was still at college - but he would always have at least one whiskey after. He didn’t really like whiskey yet, but he was determined to learn. It was cooler than drinking shitty beer for the rest of his life.

He was leaning against the bar and sipping on a whiskey that tasted like bonfire smoke - not the worst he’d ever had - when a guy had come up to him with a group of friends. He’d sort of glared at Richie and then said, “Great show, man.”

“Uh, thanks,” Richie said, because the glare and the compliment wasn’t a combination he usually got. “Glad you guys liked it.”

“Although you do really fucking love those ‘your mom’ jokes, huh,” the guy said. “Maybe you should get some new material.”

The guy’s friends had looked as confused as Richie did and it had only been a second before the guy sort of blinked, and rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Sorry, I am so sorry. I really don’t know where that came from.”

“It’s fine,” Richie said, because there was something about this guy which meant that it was fine, which was even stupider. Richie felt like one of those dogs that just rolls over and shows its stomach the first time it meets a stranger. “You’re probably right.”

“I just,” the guy said again, and glanced back at his friends. They seemed to get the message, melting away back into the crowd. “This is gonna sound weird, but do I know you?”

“Not that I… remember,” Richie said. He wanted to know this guy. He was desperately searching through his memory to see if he _did_ know this guy, but there was just a big blind spot. “Maybe we - went to school together?”

“Maybe,” the guy said. “Sorry, my name’s Eddie.” He flinched away as someone squeezed past him. “I fucking hate these places. Do you know they tested bar nuts once and found like twenty seven different kinds of urine?”

“Yeah? How much of that was from your mom?” Now it was Richie’s turn to flinch, and he shook his head a little bit. “Whoa, sorry. I think I’ve got whatever you’ve got.”

“Well,” the guy - Eddie - said. “Glad it’s not just me. Where did you say you went to school?”

“I didn’t,” Richie said. “But it was Derry. This shithole in Maine-”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “That’s where I’m from. Um.” He shrugged a shoulder, suddenly awkward - the beats of familiarity and strangeness mixing like oil and water. “Well anyway, I just thought I’d say hi. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. “Nice to meet you.”

Then he went home and jerked off and came so hard he saw stars, came almost the moment he even laid a hand on his dick, and afterwards he tried not to think about how weird it was that he came harder than he had in months just thinking about a stranger who’d barely even spoken to him, and whose name he was already forgetting.

-

“Okay,” Mike says. He looks around at all of them. Richie hopes he looks less desperate than he feels, as if _that_ train hasn’t already left the station. “We need to cut our palms.”

This time, rather than a grody shard of glass, Mike’s brought a knife for this purpose. (Richie doesn’t think about his own knife, about the last time he used it to carve _R+E_ into the bridge.) Mike goes first - one neat cut, and then the other, before handing it to Bill who does the same.

No one speaks. Ben solemnly cuts his palms, then Bev does the same, and then it’s back to Richie. The handle of the knife is smeared with blood; Bev’s holding one of her palms in the other, trying not to look.

Blood has always meant something different to Beverly since the bathroom; Pennywise had known that.

“Thanks, Bevvie,” Richie says, and he tries to make the first cut. His hands are shaking. “Wow, I shouldn’t have gone last, you assholes are too cut up to do this for me.”

“You can do it, Richie,” Bill says. Which is a nice sentiment and all, but it doesn’t help when Richie’s close to cutting his fingers off by accident.

He grips the knife, his fingers sliding in the blood and takes a deep breath. He thinks of Eddie, and he thinks of Eddie dying. Richie can’t let him die a second time.

He cuts his palms, and hands the knife to Mike.

“Okay,” Mike says again. He slips the knife into a holster - he’d told Richie it would be bad to leave their blood mingled there, in a place like this. Just because Pennywise is gone doesn’t mean that there aren’t other monsters. “Now hold hands.”

Richie opens his mouth and closes it again. Instead, he holds out his hands to Bev and Mike, and they press their cuts together. All of their hands are smeared in red and Richie can’t tell what blood is his and what’s Bev’s, or Mike’s.

He can feel something now - he’d thought it was just the throbbing of his hands at first, but it’s getting - more. Unless his blood is about to pump itself right out of his body, there’s something more - a thrumming, under his feet, over his head. _Inside_ his head.

“Guys?” Ben says. “Uh, you can all hear that, right?”

It’s working, Richie thinks, elated, and then - “It’s working!”

He believes. He always did.

-

Eddie's waiting for them when they climb out of the hole, back on the street.

“Of course,” Eddie says. He’s stood shivering in front of them, wearing Richie’s sweatpants and Richie’s t-shirt and Richie’s _hoodie_, and he looks so much like something Richie couldn’t even make up in his head, and he’s wearing Richie’s clothes and he’s here, he’s alive.

Richie rakes his gaze over him, drinking him in thirstily like a man trapped in the Sahara. He’s wearing Richie’s clothes - they’re too big for him, the sweatpants rolled up at the bottom, the t-shirt neatly tucked in. He’s fisting his hands in the cuffs, the sleeves are _too long_ and Richie just - his brain is 404ing.

It’s Eddie, and he’s here, and he’s wearing Richie’s _clothes_. He’s alive. He’s alive.

“Uh, guys?” Richie calls uncertainly. “You can all - see him, right? I haven’t - have I gone insane? Wait, no, don’t tell me. I’d rather live like this.”

“You fucking _assholes_,” Eddie says, taking a step closer, “of course you’re in the sewers, you assholes! Is that - did you cut yourselves? Do you know how fucking lucky we were not to get blood poisoning the first time?”

Richie can see now that Eddie’s cuts have opened up as well - there are dark, rust-coloured stains on the sleeves of Richie’s hoodie.

“How did you get my clothes?” Richie says helplessly and Eddie lets go of the hoodie cuffs to gesture wildly.

“You assholes just brought me back to life and _that’s_ your fucking question! How did I get your clothes - you left me in a goddamn ice box! I walked into your fucking hotel room because you didn’t lock it because you’re the stupidest motherfucker I ever met!”

“It’s you,” Richie says, and he’s crying now, he can feel it, warm salty tears running down his face. “It’s really you.”

Eddie softens, takes another step forward. “Of course it’s me,” he says. “You dumb motherfucker.”

“I never noticed but verbal abuse is absolutely their love language,” Ben says quietly behind him, and Bev says, “_How_ did you _not_ notice?”

“I think it’s abuse in general,” Bill says, and it’s like Eddie’s only just noticed that the rest of them are there.

“You guys did it,” he says, and he falters for the first time. Richie can see him - the faint scar on his cheek, his hair messier than Richie’s ever seen it, the way he’s shaking and can’t stop. “You really did it.”

“Of course we did it,” Bill says. “Richie would’ve killed us if we hadn’t.”

“_And_,” Bev says, “we wanted you back.” She blinks rapidly, trying to hold back tears. “Eddie. We missed you so much. I just wanted to say - I’m so sorry-”

“You did it,” Eddie says, wonderingly, “all of you, for _me_, my best friends,” and it’s like a dam bursts, and they all rush forward in unison to hug him, to hug each other, to feel together and alive.

When they let go of each other, Richie remembers the fanny pack. He fumbles to get it off and hands to Eddie, his hands still shaking.

“Your inhaler,” he says. “If you want.”

“I do,” Eddie says and takes the fanny pack, buckling it around himself with zero embarrassment. He doesn’t comment on Richie having it. “Pity you didn’t bring my back-up.”

“I still don’t understand why you needed two,” Richie says. He’s making inane conversation because he has literally no idea what else he’s supposed to say - all that’s going around in his head is a constant litany of _you’re alive you’re alive you’re alive._

It doesn’t matter, as much, if Eddie doesn’t want him (and it’s not like Richie’s going to _ask_). Richie’s made the first move now; he brought Eddie back to life. He’s not going to pressure Eddie into anything, and just - Richie couldn’t live in a world where Eddie was dead.

But they’ve still got twenty seven years of forgetting each other and they don’t _know_ each other, not really, not outside of the kind of knowing that Richie has running through his veins, so he doesn’t want to - Eddie’s been through a lot. He didn’t choose to die, and he didn’t choose to come back.

Richie isn’t going to take anymore of Eddie’s choices away from him.


	6. Richie.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Okay, I know you’re making fun of me,” Eddie says, “but you’re fucking colour blind if you really can’t tell the difference. We both have to live with this decision, Richie. God, I just know that you’re going to pull all this shit about not caring about it and the minute we’re done painting you’re going to be like, ‘Oh, fuck, Eddie, we should’ve gone with Cloud Nine instead.’”
> 
> “First of all, I don’t sound that nasal,” Richie says, although he’s actually not sure if that’s true, “and second of all, what the fuck is Cloud Nine?”
> 
> “It’s this!” Eddie yells, shaking a paint sample in Richie’s face. “You’ve been looking at it for the past ten minutes, you piece of shit!”
> 
> I love you, Richie thinks, unbidden. But he still hates Cloud Nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eddie comes back and suddenly my chapters double in length, cool.

They go back to the Town House. Richie has his hands in his pockets, compulsive curling them into fists and opening them out again, stretching the pockets of his hoodie. He keeps peeking glances at Eddie, trying not to be too obvious, trying not to do what he wants - which is put his hands on Eddie’s shoulders so he can’t get away and just _stare_ at him.

Eddie’s alive. Eddie’s _alive_.

No one else seems to know what to do either - Bill reaches out with one hand then drops it, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch him. Eddie seems oblivious to it all, happy to pull the cuffs of Richie’s hoodie over his hands and chat away to Beverly and Mike, asking how they did it, what happened, how long it took.

Richie’s a little behind him, trying to memorise the way Eddie looks from the back, just in case. Just if he ever needs to remember again.

-

They all sleep together, the way they used to when they were younger at sleepovers, when they’d sneak Bev in through someone’s window. It’s a little crazy and there’s not quite enough room on the bed but no one wants to let Eddie out of their sight quite yet. Richie feels like their luck must be about to run out: no one gets to kill a murder clown twice _and_ bring their best friend back from the dead.

Although no one else has to try and stop a murder clown from killing them (twice) _and_ watch the love of their life die in the sewers in front of them, so maybe it sort of karmically evens out.

Richie’s nearest the wall and it’s cold against his back - Eddie’s next to him, with Bev sort of laying across the two of them. He’s holding Bill’s hand, and he can see the top of Mike’s forehead and Ben’s feet, so everyone’s there, Richie can see them all just by looking.

“Guys,” Eddie says. “This is really uncomfortable.”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Bev says, opening one eye to grin at him. “Did we ask for your opinion?”

“What if you kill me again in my sleep?” Eddie says. “What if someone rolls over and suffocates me to death?”

“Nah, Haystack lost the weight, you’re safe,” Richie says, only it comes out muffled by Bev’s hair. He spits a few strands out of his mouth, making a face that probably no one can see.

“I won’t suffocate you,” Ben says, mildly annoyed, and Mike speaks up from the other side of the bed, “Can you get your feet out of my face? Why are you the only one sleeping upside down?”

“It makes more sense!” Ben protests and then everyone’s talking, all at once, and _Richie’s_ the only who quiet. He should get an award for that, really. It’s not like it happens often.

He catches Eddie’s eye and grins at him.

Richie doesn’t think he’s going to be able to sleep, but he must have been more tired than he realised because he falls asleep pretty easily, even with everyone bickering over his head. He feels - _safe_ when he wakes up, in a way that he doesn’t remember being before. Even when he couldn’t remember, he always woke up with something wrong, something out of his reach, writing it off as bad dreams.

But this time he hasn’t dreamt about murder clowns and he hasn’t dreamt about Eddie’s death - he reaches out to check, and Eddie’s already there, frowning even in sleep. Richie’s heard it said that people look peaceful when they sleep but not Eddie: his forehead is wrinkled and his lips are pressed together.

Richie’s suddenly struck with a fear that Eddie has died in the night and he reaches out to check, pressing his hand against Eddie’s neck to feel for a pulse.

Eddie’s eyes fly open and he tries to move away, but they’re all so wedged together that there’s nowhere for him to go.

“Get off my neck, asshole.”

“Oh, Eddie, my love,” Richie says fondly. “You’re still alive. And such a morning person, too. Delightful.”

“Fuck off, Richie,” Eddie says grumpily.

Bill is the first one to leave, saying Audra’s probably wondering where he is - as if he hasn’t already told her, Richie isn’t stupid. He can tell an excuse when he hears one and he hears three more in quick succession: Mike, Bev, Ben.

Leaving him alone with Eddie.

Eddie doesn’t seem to notice, taking the excuses at face value. It’s hard, because he knows they all want to stay close to Eddie, not to leave him, but they have lives and less of a need than Richie does. Richie doesn’t want to ever let Eddie out of his sight again.

So they go for breakfast, and Eddie wants to buy some new clothes, so they do that, and then they go back to the Town House because Eddie says he’s tired and he didn’t sleep very well.

Richie naps on and off. He can’t sleep properly, too worried that he’ll wake up and Eddie will be gone, or dead. Or both, gone _and_ dead, somewhere that Richie can’t bring him back from next time.

It’s early evening when he wakes up again and knows he can’t go back to sleep. Eddie’s stood by the window, jabbing at something on his phone, and Richie has a feeling, one he can’t even place. It’s just a well of _feeling_ inside of him, almost overflowing. Do people feel like this all the time? Is this what it’s like to be in love with someone a) that you can remember and b) who is alive this time?

“Hey,” Richie says. “How’s your, uh…” He gestures at Eddie’s chest, trying to somehow say _the big fucking hole in your chest_ without actually saying it.

“Itchy,” Eddie says, and smiles at him. He seems more relaxed, which is weird - Eddie’s probably the only person in the world who could die and come back from it seeming like he’s just been on a fucking spa day. “You want to see?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, already shrugging out of Richie’s hoodie (he’s _still wearing_ Richie’s hoodie) and starting to pull his shirt up. Richie’s mouth goes abruptly dry and he tries to swallow, his hands shaking. He feels sick. Eddie is _undressing in front of him_ and Richie’s just - he tells himself this has happened before, they did it all the time when they were kids, swimming in the quarry. It’s fine. It’s fine.

Eddie yanks up his shirt to show Richie his chest and it takes Richie a minute to focus, when confronted with the expanse of pale, bare skin, to remember what he’s supposed to be looking at.

There’s a puckered scar running up Eddie’s chest, shiny pink but already fading, even as Richie watches. He reaches out to skim his fingers across it before he can stop himself and Eddie flinches, letting his shirt drop.

“Sorry,” Richie says, too late and stupid. “I didn’t. Uh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says, but it doesn’t sound like it is. “It doesn’t hurt or anything. It feels - old.”

Richie takes a deep breath, then another. “Okay,” he says finally, “I’m just going to say it. This is fucking weird.”

“This _is_ fucking weird!” Eddie says. He’s not shouting, but his voice is definitely raised. “You’re so quiet, man, it’s freaking me the fuck out! Since when do _you_ know how to shut up?”

“I didn’t mean that!” Richie says defensively. “I meant… this! You! You were dead!”

“_You_ brought me back! You can’t be mad at me for being alive when it’s your fucking fault, dickface.”

Richie starts crying. He doesn’t _mean_ to - honestly, it’s 50/50 between crying and stress-vomiting - but it’s just - he missed Eddie _so much_. He didn’t - he hadn’t let himself think about this, hadn’t really let himself believe it, and Eddie’s here, every inch of him still a vibrating ball of rage.

The tears just spill up and over, even as Richie’s furiously trying to scrub them away. He doesn’t think he used to cry this much when he was a kid, but he guesses that when the love of your life dies, you get a pass on all the crying. He thinks that sounds about right, anyway. It’s not like there’s anyone else he can ask.

“Oh my God,” Eddie says. His eyes dart around and he takes a tentative step forward, awkwardly patting Richie on the shoulder. “Uh. Don’t cry, Richie.”

“You are so bad at this,” Richie sniffles, wiping his nose with his sleeve, and Eddie leaps back.

“Oh my God, you are so gross,” he says, and starts digging around in his pockets for a tissue, only it’s Richie’s hoodie so of course there’s nothing in there. Eddie seems to realise that at the same time and searches through the fanny pack instead, finding the wet wipes. “Here.”

Richie takes one and wipes his nose off, then uses the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe the wet from his face. Eddie frowns and moves forward, plucking at the hoodie.

“Wait is this - you asshole, you’re wearing my hoodie!”

“You’re wearing _mine_,” Richie says and Eddie frowns at him and says, “I’m not wiping my _bodily fluids_ all over yours, you owe me a new hoodie!”

Honestly, Richie had forgotten that he was even wearing Eddie’s hoodie. He’d stolen it out of Eddie’s luggage after he died, before they’d sent it back to Myra, and he just… hadn’t really taken it off since.

“You probably have bodily fluids on mine,” Richie says. “You’ve probably got death juice all over it.”

“Uh no, I _haven’t_, because I actually showered when I woke up, because you’d left me dead in an ice box.”

“I had to!” Richie says. “What was I supposed to do, just let you rot away in my hotel room?”

“I can’t believe you’re even staying here,” Eddie says loudly, like he’s not even listening to Richie, “after everything that’s happened, this is where I got _stabbed_, plus I’m not even sure that anyone still works here which means these rooms? Haven’t been cleaned in at least a month!”

“Maybe _I_ cleaned my room,” Richie says and Eddie puts his hands on his hips and says, “Like fuck you did, I’ve met you. You might as well be a - a - a garbage monster!”

“A _garbage monster_?” Richie says incredulously, and it’s like a dam bursts and they both double over laughing. It’s just ridiculous, standing shouting at each other in the lobby of the goddamn _Derry Town House_, like - Richie’s life has been insane since he got the phone call from Mike, and he feels like he’s still wandering through some surreal Dali wonderland.

“Okay,” Eddie says, straightening up. “Where’s my stuff?”

“Uh,” Richie says.

“Only I couldn’t find it,” Eddie says, “and I really want to take some iron supplements. Like I know I’ve been - gone - but I still, that means I probably need some, because I don’t know what’s happened while - or if _anything’s_ happened-”

Richie isn’t stupid. He can tell that Eddie can’t bring himself to say he was dead - there’s nothing subtle about it. But God help him, for the first time in his life he’s met a bruise that he doesn’t want to poke. Having Eddie back still feels so delicate, like all Richie has to do is breathe wrong and this tentative ceasefire will be over. And maybe Eddie will leave, go back to New York, and Richie just - he’s only just got him back. He doesn’t want to lose him again.

So Richie follows Eddie’s lead, because whatever Eddie wants, Richie can do. That’s how it was before. As if Richie knows any other way to be.

It doesn’t mean that he can’t have a little fun, though.

“We sent your stuff back to Myra,” he says. “Lovely woman, by the way. Totally cool of you to marry your mom.”

Eddie goes white and then he goes purple, and then he throws the pack of wet wipes he’s still holding onto at Richie’s face and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him - leaving Richie stood helplessly, staring after him. He missed him _so much_ that he still feels a little bit like he can’t breathe, like Eddie’s got one hand around his lungs and one around his heart and he’s just _squeezing_.

So. Business as usual then.

-

Sometimes Richie feels like he’s thirteen again. It’s like he forgets that he’s forty now, that Eddie is - although _look_ at him, despite being literally dead for two weeks, he still looks better than Richie does, and ain’t that the truth.

Honestly, if someone told Richie ‘yo, you’ve been dead for weeks’ and he looked in the mirror, he doesn’t think he’d find it that unbelievable. Richie will never be over the cosmic unfairness of Eddie, Ben, Bev and Mike _all_ getting to grow up hot. Maybe with Mike it’s fine, because he did get stuck in Derry so he should get _something_, but it’s not very fair for anyone else.

Even Bill, while not a hunk of man meat like Ben, still managed to be sort of okay.

“Hey, fucknuts,” Eddie says, startling Richie out of his reverie. Probably for the best. “There’s someone at the door.”

“Oh, what, your legs don’t work now?” Richie says, even as he’s standing up and moving over to the door. “You should probably be using them more than me, make sure that your muscles didn’t wither while you were dead.”

“I’m _recovering_,” Eddie says loftily. “What if I overexert myself and die again?”

“What if you do?” Richie says. “Wouldn’t be much difference as far as I can tell.”

Bev’s on the other side of the door and Richie catches her mid-rolling her eyes at them.

“Richie,” Bev says, and then she sees Eddie and smiles at him, the kind of smile that they never got to see much from Bev before. “Hi, Eddie.”

“Hi, Bevvie,” Eddie says, and jams his hands in his pockets. “What’s up?”

“Well,” Bev says. “As much as I’m sure you’d both love to stick around here, I just wondered - it might be good, to get out. Of Derry.”

“Of course it fucking would,” Eddie says. “I’d burn it to the ground if I was cool with going to prison for arson.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at Richie and says, “I’m just waiting for Trashmouth to get his shit together.”

“What?” No one told Richie this. “I’m ready to go, dude. I was waiting for you, I thought you’d want to see the others more.”

“I can see them any time I like now,” Eddie says dismissively. “You said no one forgot this time.”

“Yeah, but everyone’s _here_,” Richie says, gesturing expansively and Eddie rolls his eyes and says, “In _Derry_. You think I want to come back from - that - and stick around in _this_ shithole?”

It hits Richie, all at once and then a little bit at a time, like a tidal wave pulling back and lapping at his feet. It had been Eddie that time, in the comedy club - of course it had been, only Eddie would be enough of an asshole that it would still be a draw to him even when they were strangers. Richie wants to say something but instead just finds himself grinning helplessly at Eddie, his hands in his pockets, even as Beverly looks between the two of them.

“You want to get out of here, you just say the word, senor,” Richie says. “Is no problem for me.”

Eddie looks at Beverly and she nods. “Can’t forget the Voices.”

“You fucking love the Voices,” Richie says. “All of you. I know you do.”

“Richie,” Eddie says solemnly. “We never loved the Voices. In fact, the ghostwriter suddenly makes so much more sense to me. It’s for your own good. No one could let you go on stage like that, it wouldn’t go down well at all.”

“Not like your mom,” Richie says. “She went down _really_ well on me last night.”

“On second thoughts, maybe I’ll go with you guys instead,” Eddie says to Bev. “Richie said you have a yacht.”

Bev laughs and says something, but Richie’s stuck on that ‘instead’. It sounds like Eddie’s planning on going home with him - with Richie, back to Chicago - but that doesn’t make sense at all. Eddie’s never said anything about that.

Richie doesn’t want to point it out, in case Eddie changes his mind - or in case Eddie hadn’t meant that at all. The thought of it, of making that assumption and Eddie looking at him derisively or even just confused, wondering why Richie would make that leap - Richie flushes hot and cold all over.

Instead, he goes to his laptop and books two tickets to Chicago as furtively as he can while Eddie and Bev are talking.

When he tunes back in again, Eddie’s in the middle of saying something. “...go back to your lives,” he says. “I don’t want you guys hanging around forever.”

Bev says something that Richie doesn’t catch before leaning forward and wrapping him into a hug. Eddie’s head drops to her shoulder and he hugs her back, slowly, like he’s still not quite sure he’s allowed. They stay like that for a beat longer than normal, and then Bev slowly pulls back, her hands on his shoulders, staring up at him.

Richie would give at least ten thousand dollars to hear what she says to him, Eddie’s head ducked and Bev whispering into his ear. Eddie reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and Bev smiles.

Richie can tell from here that she’s crying not to try. He refuses to let that make him tear up as well.

It’s only later that he catches Eddie, right after Eddie’s done ordering take-out on Richie’s laptop (the ‘extra notes’ section is incredibly long, detailing cashew nuts, lactose intolerance and a whole host of allergies that Richie is pretty sure Eddie doesn’t have).

“What did Bev want?”

“It was awkward,” Eddie says. “They didn’t know if they could go home now. I said it was fine.”

“You told them to leave,” Richie says, confused. Eddie shrugs a shoulder.

“They’ve got to go back to their lives,” he says. “Obviously.”

“But…”

“You guys all split up the last time,” Eddie says. “We can’t stay here forever. I’d kill myself if I came back to life just to stay in Derry.”

“But you’re not leaving _me_,” Richie says and it’s embarrassing how it comes out, how desperate he sounds. Eddie glances up at him and tugs him down onto the couch next to him by his wrist, making a face like _Richie_ is the one being weird about all this.

“I don’t want to go back to New York just yet,” he says. “Okay? Will you calm the fuck down now?”

Richie hadn’t realised he was bouncing his knee until Eddie said that - he stops, trying not to show how flustered he is.

“I don’t care,” Richie says. “Just thought you might want to avoid your momwife a while longer. I gotta warn you, though, I don’t have a doctor on speed-dial.”

Eddie smiles at him for once - unexpected and beautiful, like a flower opening under the sun. God, Richie’s going to kill _himself_ if Eddie keeps bringing out this level of total fucking sap in him. Was he like this before? He was, he realises miserably. Carving their names into the kissing bridge, trying to write a poem once like Ben wrote for Beverly, in case that worked.

“It’s okay,” Eddie says. “I do.” Then a thought strikes him - “Have you cleaned your apartment lately? Have you even been back? Everything’s going to be disgusting, isn’t it, I bet you don’t own a single cleaning product even-”

It’s Richie’s turn to smile.

-

It’s not until the plane passes over Vermont that Richie dares to relax. He hears Eddie exhale beside him and glances over. Eddie’s hands are white knuckled on the arm rest, and he’s staring dead ahead.

“I never knew you were scared of flying,” Richie says and Eddie spares him a glance.

“I’m not,” he says. “I wasn’t. I just…” He shrugs a shoulder. “I just wasn’t sure that the - _magic_. Would hold.”

Richie shifts slightly, just enough that his arm is touching Eddie’s. It’s terrifying. He’s _forty_ and trying not to pop a boner on a plane because they’re touching between two or three layers of clothes. On the _arm_.

“I was scared too,” he admits and Eddie rolls his eyes.

“Of course you were, you fucking pussy.”

“Uh, excuse _me_, but between the two of us,_ I_ didn’t need a pep talk to go and fight the murder clown.”

“It’s totally reasonable to be scared of a fucking space clown serial killer,” Eddie says. The mother in front of them turns around to glare and Eddie just glares back at her until she flushes, facing forwards again. God, Richie loves him _so much_.

-

They’re in Richie’s apartment and Eddie’s stalking around inspecting it like an angry cat, hackles raised. He keeps picking things up and putting them back down again in a way that suggests it’s not up to standard. Richie doesn’t know how his vinyl collection is inciting this level of disgust from Eddie, but he loves that it is.

Eddie wheels on him suddenly, his eyebrows drawn together.

“Do you even live here?”

“What?” Richie’s half buried in the slippy leather couch, too big for the room. He doesn’t remember picking it out - thinks he paid an interior designer person to just furnish the whole thing for him. “Yes?”

“There’s nothing of you here,” Eddie says. “It’s like a hotel.”

“Okay?” Richie doesn’t really get why that’s a problem. “I mean, I’m on tour a lot. Why am I justifying myself to you anyway? You’re in _my_ house, asshole, you’re a guest. You’re the most critical guest in the world. I’m letting you stay here rent free.”

“It’s weird,” Eddie says. He’s glaring at some piece of art on the wall now like he’s personally offended by it. “I didn’t think - when I thought, I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“When you thought… what?” Richie says, confused. He feels like Eddie’s having a conversation with himself, and Richie isn’t even sure he needs to be here for it.

“Your apartment,” Eddie says. He’s going red now, but his mouth is set. “You’re supposed to have a nice place.”

“It is a nice place!” Richie says. “What’s wrong with it?”

Eddie makes a _hmph_ noise and stalks back over to sink into the couch next to Richie.

“I thought you’d be - successful,” Eddie says, after a while. “You’re doing well.”

“I _am_ doing well.”

“So I thought…” Eddie gestures at the empty walls. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“That’s why you came here? To leech off my happiness?”

“No, I came here to see what it looked like!” Eddie snaps. He’s twisting his fingers together in his lap, clearly uncomfortable but determined to see the conversation through anyway. It’s interesting - it feels new - like since Eddie died, he’s still trying to be brave.

Richie knows and doesn’t know Eddie, knows him bone-deep but couldn’t tell you his former home address, but he knows that Eddie has never liked talking about anything remotely personal. He never spoke to them about his mother, if he could help it - won’t talk about being dead, about Myra, barely even tells them how he feels.

It had taken Richie almost dying for Eddie to admit he was scared - Richie still hears that in his nightmares, Eddie begging Bill for forgiveness, _please don’t be mad_. Richie will be mad at Bill about that til the day _he_ dies, probably; Eddie worked harder than any of them to be brave. Eddie wouldn’t let Richie die if he could help it.

“I wasn’t happy,” Eddie says finally, glaring at Richie like he’s daring him to disagree. “I thought I was, but I wasn’t. Now I’m - back - I want to be. I need to change. But I need to - I don’t remember, I never have-”

It’s painful, hearing Eddie struggle to find the words. Richie had hated growing up for a number of reasons, but it had never been his home life. Richie had grown up being loved, knew what that felt like. If he was unhappy, it was by choice, in a way - he hadn’t remembered loving Eddie but he had known there was a reason he couldn’t be bothered to make an effort with anyone else, hadn’t cared enough to work at a relationship, to write his own material, even to decorate his own house.

But Eddie had never had the choice - had grown up with his overbearing mother, hadn’t ever understood love outside of friendship. And when he had forgotten the Losers, he had forgotten even that. Was it any wonder that in his search for happiness, to be loved, he had ended up with his mother? How could he do anything else?

“We can go shopping you want,” Richie says. “Buy some shit. Liven this place up.”

Eddie looks around doubtfully and Richie rolls his eyes.

“Or not. Just go ahead and complain about how fucking depressing it is in here without actually doing anything about it.”

“It’s _your_ apartment,” Eddie says. But Richie sees him later, hunched over his laptop, scrolling through Anthropologie. Fuck it, if ten thousand throw pillows and a few fucking succulents are what it takes to make Eddie happy, Richie’ll allow it.

-

It’s been a week when Mike calls. The kitchen walls have streaks of paint on them where Eddie was trying to work out the difference between egg-shell and off-white, or something else with douchier names. He’s still in there, hands in his pockets, staring at them, as though something’s going to change.

It’s white. They’re all white. The kitchen is _already_ white. Richie’s a fucking homo and this interior design obsession doesn’t even make sense to _him_, so he can’t tell what about it’s got Eddie going.

Either way, he’s happy for the distraction.

“Hey,” Richie says. Eddie turns to look at him but Richie mouths _it’s just Mike_ and waves him off. “‘Sup, Hanlon?”

“Stan,” Mike says, with no preamble, and it’s like an electric shock. Richie jerks up off the couch, and doesn’t know what to do with himself once he’s standing. Had they _forgotten_ Stan? Or had he just regular forgotten Stan, which seemed even worse?

Eddie pokes his head in from the kitchen. “Is everything alright?”

“It’s fine!” Richie calls. “Go back to your fucking white-washing.”

“Don’t call it that!” Eddie yells, but he wanders back into the kitchen anyway. Richie sits down again, pressing one hand to his chest and taking deep breaths, trying to slow his heart rate.

“Stan,” Richie says. “Oh my God, I forgot about Stan.”

“I didn’t,” Mike says. “I don’t think we’re - _forgetting_. Not Stan, anyway.”

“But something else?”

“The ritual,” Mike says. “I don’t remember the ritual.”

_Richie_ had forgotten the ritual. It’s weird - he knows that Eddie was dead, and that they brought him back. That they had gone back into the sewers to do it. But he knows this like facts laid out in front of him. He doesn’t remember what they did or how it felt.

But they were going to do it for Stan, if it worked. When it worked.

“I don’t either,” he says. His mouth’s suddenly dry - Richie swallows and it’s like swallowing sandpaper. “Fuck. Fuck!”

“I don’t remember,” Mike says. He sounds distressed for the first time in a while: Mike, the most even-keeled of all them.

“Hey,” Richie says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mike says. “I should have - I thought I’d brought the book, I must have forgotten it - but I can’t remember what it was, what we did, how we brought Eddie back-”

“Not that,” Richie says. “Well yes, that too. But, like… dude, this isn’t all on you. You’ve done, like, a _lot_.”

Mike doesn’t say anything, but Richie can hear him breathing on the other end of the phone. Richie tries not to be mad that he’s the one having this conversation - surely it should be Bill or Ben, the ones probably most, you know, emotionally intelligent or whatever - but maybe they _have_ had this conversation with Mike. Maybe Mike needs to hear it again.

“You stayed in Derry,” Richie says, “when the rest of us got the fuck outta there the first chance we got. You basically saved a load of kids from dying again, dude. And then you stuck around and helped me get Eddie back. So yeah, honestly, it blows fucking chunks that we can’t save Stan. That we don’t... remember. But don’t - it’s not all your fault. I kinda feel like one of _us_ should be stepping up this time.”

“I don’t think we can ever go back,” Mike says in a low voice. “We’ve been so fucking lucky. I’m sorry if it - makes me a bad person, Richie. But I can’t go back. I don’t think I’d make it out again.”

“You’ve done enough,” Richie says. “I am going to miss Stan the Man every fucking day of my life. But at least I get to remember him now, even if I don’t... I can’t remember how to get him back. I wish I could. But I don’t think any of us can go back. I don’t think we should.”

Mike lets out a sigh, turning to static over the phone. “He was the best, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Richie says fondly, remembering everything - Stan’s bar mitzvah, coming out to Stan, wandering through the woods while Stan looked for birds and Richie looked for abandoned skin mags, all those golden days they spent just being together. “He was.”

They talk a little while longer and Mike sounds better when Richie hangs up, like it’s already fading into memory. That’s probably best, Richie thinks - already, it’s starting to feel less urgent to him, like a photograph fading into sepia.

“Hey, Eds,” Richie calls. “You remember how we brought you back to life?”

“Uh, no,” Eddie says. He’s got his hand bandaged even though the cuts healed like, days ago, and he’s still wearing Richie’s hoodie. There are smears of paint on it, and Richie doesn’t care - Richie likes it, this evidence that Eddie is here, alive. “Should I? I don’t think you ever told me.”

“No,” Richie says. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

Eddie scratches at a loose thread on his sweatpants, not meeting Richie’s eyes. “Maybe you _should_ tell me,” he says. “In case - in case I need to do it one day.”

“If you die again, I’ll kill you myself,” Richie promises. “I want to like, wrap you up in cotton wool. Or get you one of those big hamster balls where nothing can get you.”

He realises that he’s thinking along the same lines as Eddie’s mom and feels sick, but Eddie doesn’t seem to realise. Eddie wrinkles his nose.

“I feel like that would be super gross. There’s nowhere for the air to go.”

Richie wants to say, _You know you can stay here for as long as you want_. He thinks about saying, _Maybe we should talk about this_. Or _Did you see Stan while you were dead?_

But Richie is so lucky to have what he has. He can’t risk losing any of it. It’ll end eventually - he’s not stupid enough to think that Eddie is going to rattle around his flat forever, betting on the stock exchange and wrapping himself up in Richie’s hoodies, Richie’s sweatpants, cuffs trailing over his wrists and ankles.

Instead, Eddie waits for Richie to say something and then seems to give up when Richie doesn’t, turning and wandering back into the kitchen.

“Can you come in here?” Eddie yells. “You need to make a decision!”

“_I_ need to?” Richie says, even as he’s getting up and heading into the kitchen because fuck him, that’s why. “It’s your decision. You’re the one getting all House Flippers on me.”

“Oh, right, like I’m such a fucking crazy person for wanting to feel like someone actually lives here,” Eddie bitches. “You live in a fucking blank space of an apartment, but _I’m_ the crazy one.”

“You _are_ the crazy one,” Richie says. “I’m glad you can see that finally. All these years of everyone thinking it was me, just because they never knew about your obsession with Snow White versus Pure White.”

“Okay, I _know_ you’re making fun of me,” Eddie says, “but you’re fucking colour blind if you really can’t tell the difference. We both have to live with this decision, Richie. God, I just know that you’re going to pull all this shit about not caring about it and the minute we’re done painting you’re going to be like, ‘Oh, fuck, Eddie, we should’ve gone with Cloud Nine instead.’”

“First of all, I don’t sound that nasal,” Richie says, although he’s actually not sure if that’s true, “and second of all, what the fuck is Cloud Nine?”

“It’s this!” Eddie yells, shaking a paint sample in Richie’s face. “You’ve been looking at it for the past ten minutes, you piece of _shit_!”

_I love you_, Richie thinks, unbidden. But he still hates Cloud Nine.

-

They soon settle into a routine. Eddie spends most of his days on Richie’s laptop, stubbornly refusing to buy his own (“I already _own_ one, but you sent my fucking stuff back to New York so unless you’re going to buy me another one, I’m going to use this”). Richie thinks it’s mostly because Eddie likes annoying him, kicking his sock-clad feet up into Richie’s lap as Richie hunches over his iPhone, trying to use the Notes function.

It’s been a week or two before Richie catches sight of the screen. Eddie’s on some kind of investment site and the _numbers_, holy shit.

“I didn’t know you were good at - this,” Richie says, pointing at the screen. “Stocks and shares. Did you ever hit the big button in the stock exchange?”

There’s a crease between Eddie’s eyebrows. Richie remembers what happens last time he touched it.

“That’s not how that works,” he says finally. “You don’t get to just press that. I think you have to be famous. Why are you so surprised anyway? That I’m good at this?”

“I just didn’t know you were!” Richie says. “It’s not like you were a math genius in school.”

“Actually, I was! How do you think I got the money to start my business?” Eddie says and Richie shrugs a shoulder and says, “I don’t fucking know, maybe you married rich.”

He thinks Eddie’s going to shut down again, the way he usually does when Myra’s brought up, however implicitly but instead Eddie smiles a private little smile.

“Anyone you married would marry rich,” he says. It’s Richie’s turn to frown, and Eddie rolls his eyes. “Married _Rich_.” He jabs Richie in the chest with a finger. “Get it? You’re Rich. They’d marry Rich.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “And you say that _I’m_ not funny? That’s the worst joke I think I’ve heard in my fucking life.”

“Oh, did you perform your set with earplugs?” Eddie says and Richie mimes being hit in the heart and says, for the first time in years, “Eddie Spaghetti gets off a good one!”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, like he’s not still smiling. “I’m hungry. You going to learn to cook anytime soon or are we getting take-out again?”

“I know how to cook,” Richie says. “I just don’t want to cook with all your insane substitutes. You’re not lactose intolerant. You’re not even allergic.”

“I don’t know that,” Eddie says. “I haven’t been tested since I came back. And there’s nothing wrong with being careful.”

They end up ordering pizza, and Richie just knows that Eddie’s going to abandon his own after a slice and a half and eat most of Richie’s, and that Richie won’t be able to bring himself to stop him. He silently resigns himself to being hungry and orders extra sides, in the dismal hope that maybe that will make up for it.

He feels restless even after the pizza’s arrived. He feels something bubbling up, like he’s going to be sick, but he realises too late that it’s words instead and then they come out of him, out of nowhere.

“So here’s something you should know about me,” Richie says. “I’m gay.”

Eddie finishes chewing his bite of pizza, swallows and says, “Okay.”

It’s such a fucking anti-climax. Richie doesn’t even want to throw up, which is kind of throwing him off. He’s come to associate throwing up with major life changes at this point, or at least like, emotional confessions, so the lack of vomit is actually confusing.

“‘Okay’?” Richie says. “That’s it?”

Eddie takes another bite of pizza. It’s kind of insulting how unhurried he is.

“I mean,” Eddie says, once his mouth is empty again, “it’s not - the weirdest thing.” He sets the pizza down in the box, grabbing a napkin and wiping his fingers. “I think I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning, Rich.”

Well, Richie thinks optimistically. At least he can have most of his own pizza now.

-

“Hey,” Eddie says, a few days later. He hasn’t mentioned the gay thing and Richie can’t bring himself to care. Eddie’s alive - he’s alive, and he _knows_, and he’s still here. It would be selfish to ask for anything more of that - to admit his hopes, even to himself. “Do you want to go for a drive?”

“You can’t drive,” Richie says. “You’re legally dead. How are you even doing the stocks? Are you using a fake name?”

“I’m not legally dead,” Eddie says. “I called Myra.”

Bile rises in Richie’s throat. His legs start moving before the rest of him catches up and he’s off the couch and running to the bathroom, one hand over his mouth. Eddie trails after him, still talking, as if Richie can hear it over the roaring in his ears. He slides onto his knees and pulls the toilet lid up, but nothing comes out - just some dry retching.

“...so that’s why I stayed here,” Eddie finishes. He’s leaning against the door frame, carefully out of the splash zone. “If I’d been on my own, I would’ve gone back to her. Even from Chicago.”

Richie sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth. Eddie hands him a glass of water.

“Are you okay? Maybe you’re coming down with something. Do you want me to get you some soup?”

Richie sighs and reaches out to flush the toilet. “I’m fine. This just happens sometimes.”

“It happens often? You should get that checked out, it could be a symptom of something-”

“Stress,” Richie interrupts. He stands up and wants to leave, but Eddie’s still hovering in the doorway. “It’s a stress thing.”

“Oh.” Richie waits for Eddie to ask why he’s stressed, but he doesn’t. Really, this should be the least stressed that Richie’s ever been - he has his memories, they’ve killed the clown, Eddie’s _back_.

But: Eddie’s back.

“Eds,” Richie says, when Eddie still hasn’t moved. “You want to let me past?”

Eddie flinches a little bit and moves back, follows Richie to the couch. Richie really hates this fucking slippy leather couch but he doesn’t want to admit it, because then it’ll be weeks of Eddie asking for his opinion on like, burnt umber versus blood orange and Richie just actually does not care.

“I had to do it,” Eddie says. “I couldn’t just - let her keep on believing that I was dead. When I’m not.”

Richie doesn’t really understand that. If he was in a fucked up relationship and just got to like, olly out of it by pretending he was dead, it sounds like it would be ideal.

“So,” he says cautiously instead. “You feel better?”

Eddie hugs his knees to his chest. He looks forty and thirteen all at once and Richie gets a headache, like when he forgets he’s wearing his contacts and puts his glasses on. His hands twitch reaching for a blanket - he wants to pull it over Eddie, tuck it in at the sides - and he stops himself.

Then he gives in and leans forward to drag a fleece blanket from the arm of the couch and throws it at Eddie.

“Here.” He waits, then decides _fuck it_ and asks. “So you’re going back home?”

“What?” Eddie frowns. “No. Why?”

“But you said you’re only here so you don’t go home to Myra,” Richie says and Eddie’s frown deepens.

“I told you. I don’t want to be on my own.”

“You could stay with any of the others,” Richie says and Eddie shrugs a shoulder.

“I don’t want to. Is that-” He meets Richie’s eyes for the first time and Richie finds himself searching Eddie’s face without really knowing what he’s looking for. It’s dramatic and fucking embarrassing, but he feels like he could stare at Eddie’s face forever. “Do you _want_ me to leave?”

“No,” Richie says, the word feeling like it’s ripped out of his throat, and he immediately wants to sink through the floor. He said it too quickly, he sounded too honest. But the corners of Eddie’s lips have quirked up and he’s smiling his private smile at the floor.

“Okay,” Eddie says to the floor. “Then I’m staying.”

“I mean, from what you’ve told me about your driving, it sounds like NYC is better off without you,” Richie says. “I can’t believe you fucking totaled your car.”

“It was the Mike phone call!” Eddie says. “None of us had a great reaction to that!”

“I didn’t _crash my car_,” Richie says and Eddie says, “No, you crashed and burned onstage instead. Don’t try and act like you’re fucking better than me, Trashmouth. There’s video footage.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says and leans back, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. “I keep forgetting that happened.”

“I wouldn’t go home to her because I wanted to,” Eddie says quickly, in a rush. Richie drops his hands and looks at him, but Eddie’s staring straight ahead at the television, as if anyone’s ever been that interested in Blue Planet. Eddie fucking hates most animals.

“Okay,” Richie says. He’s not sure what comes next - that’s the hardest part. He always thought he was doing it wrong, the whole ‘love’ thing. Like, isn’t it supposed to be easy? Eddie always knew exactly the right thing to say to Richie - except for when Richie had come out to him, but that was - _Richie_ still doesn’t know what the right thing to say would’ve been.

But if he loves Eddie - and he does - he feels like he should know the right things to say, that he should say things like _that wasn’t love, what you had with her_ without worrying about whether it would hurt Eddie, or whether it would push him back to her.

“Okay,” Eddie echoes. “It’s just - I have never been brave. I’m not a brave person, Rich.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. It spills out of him, whether it’s the right thing to say or not. “You’re still on this? You are so fucking brave! You saved my life!”

Eddie looks at him this time, his eyes dark and worried. “I almost let you die to the spider thing with - with his face.”

“I _actually_ let you die,” Richie says. “Uno, motherfucker.”

“Let me say what I’m trying to say, Rich,” Eddie says, and he sounds tired, and it’s not like Richie can refuse Eddie anything. “Going back to Myra would’ve been the easiest thing in the world. I don’t - I’m scared of a lot of things, and I’m scared of change and the unknown and - and risks. My whole job is looking at risks and trying to make them less - less-”

“Risky,” Richie supplies and Eddie rolls his eyes. He’s flexing his fingers, curling them then stretching them out compulsively, like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it and Richie reaches over to hold Eddie’s hands in his own.

“Risky, sure,” he says. “Coming here, staying here with you… I can’t imagine a bigger risk than that. It - _terrified_ me. It still does.”

“Homophobia,” Richie says, nodding. “Fear of gays. The scariest thing of all.”

“Kind of!” Eddie says - almost a shriek, bordering hysterical - and Richie can’t stop himself from flinching back. He lets go of Eddie’s hands but Eddie grabs him, holding onto his hands so tightly that it hurts. Richie doesn’t mind it, somehow. “Not you! Me!”

“What the fuck,” Richie says. “You’re gay?”

“Maybe!” Eddie says, still in that high-pitched tone. “Yes! Yes I am, okay?”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “Oh my God.”

“I had to think about it,” Eddie says. “You don’t understand, it’s been a lot for me. I didn’t remember - I didn’t know - a lot’s happened, for me.”

“You died and came back to life,” Richie says helpfully, and Eddie’s mouth flattens out into a thin line. “Hey, Eds, Eddie my love, come back.”

“I’m not _gone_,” Eddie says grumpily and Richie feels that twist on his heart again and wants to pull Eddie close, so close that he almost wants to climb inside of him, inside his skin, and just lay with him heart to heart.

That’s the sappiest fucking thing that Richie has ever thought in his life and God, if anyone ever manages to like, hear his internal monologues, Richie is pretty sure he’ll just straight up kill himself. _God_.

“You go somewhere when I talk about that,” he says instead. He wants to reach out and stroke Eddie’s hair, pull him into his lap, but he can’t. He’s not allowed. He keeps his grip on Eddie’s hands instead, feeling the blood pulse inside them, warm and alive. Oh God, Richie’s thoughts are so _creepy_. Talk about serial killers.

“I don’t like thinking about it,” Eddie admits. He shifts closer to Richie, his body a warm weight against Richie’s side. “It’s - scary. I told you. I’m scared of everything.”

“A lot of people are scared of death!” Richie says. “It’s scary!”

“You don’t have to do that,” Eddie says. “Act like everything I say is normal. I’m not dead now. I won’t break if you’re not gentle with me. It’s weirding me out. I thought we talked about this at the beginning but you’re still doing it and I don’t like it.”

“Well,” Richie says. “You were dead.”

“I _know_,” Eddie says and he’s working himself up, Richie can tell, so Richie has to speak first.

“No,” he says. “You _don’t_ know. I was left. You were gone and you left me but I was still here. You don’t know what it was like. I was here and you weren’t.” He’s repeating himself, and not making sense, but there aren’t words for what it was like. Not just being without Eddie, but Eddie being taken from him.

“I went a bit crazy, I think,” he says. “The others tried to tell you but I didn’t want them to. It wasn’t - it was all of them, and Mike found the ritual, but I made him. I mean, he would’ve anyway - everyone wanted you back - but I got - obsessed. I called everyone and I made them come back and I would’ve done anything to get you back. Anything.”

“Hey,” Eddie says, quiet again. “I’m here. I’m back.”

“I know that,” Richie says. He’s vaguely aware that he was trying to talk to Eddie about _Eddie’s_ issues about the whole dead thing, but he’s managed to make it about him instead. It’s definitely a skill that Richie has. “I guess we’re both - scared.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “I really hoped I was done with being scared.”

“I really wish we could go to therapy,” Richie says, “but ‘I raised my best friend from the dead after he got stabbed by evil Bozo the Clown from space and now we’re both scared he’ll somehow die again’ doesn’t seem like the easiest issue to fix.”

“I didn’t know it was you,” Eddie says. “No one told me. I thought it was all of you.”

“It was!” Richie says. “But also it was me.”

“I thought I wouldn’t be scared anymore,” Eddie says. “After we killed It. But now I’m scared of dying again, and I just want to keep - keep taking my pills and calling the doctor. But I should be better. I was getting _better_.”

“You’re allowed to be scared,” Richie says. “I’d be scared, after what happened to you.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Eddie mumbles, but he allows Richie to slip an arm around him and after a moment, Eddie curls into Richie’s side. It’s like having a cat, Richie thinks. Eddie secretly wants affection all the time but only on his terms, and he’s always ready to hiss and claw at your face if you try it when he’s not ready for it.

“We’ll go for a drive tomorrow,” Richie says. “If you want.”

“I don’t want,” Eddie says. “I just wanted to have this conversation with you somewhere that wasn’t our dumb fucking apartment but I guess it’s too late now.”

And that ‘our’ is enough for Richie to hope, in spite of himself - hope that Eddie won’t leave. He still doesn’t dare hope for anything else.


	7. Stan.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Eddie,” Richie says again. “Listen. How many thirteen year olds do you think faced down the personification of their childhood fears?”
> 
> “I don’t know if ‘personification’ is the right word here-”
> 
> “And,” Richie carries on, slightly louder, “how many fucking forty year olds went back to fight a giant fucking clown murderer?”
> 
> “When you say ‘clown murderer’ it sounds like It murdered the clowns,” Eddie says. “Technically, we’re the clown murderers.”
> 
> “Well, it wasn’t a fucking clown in the first place, really, so don’t get fucking pedantic with me,” Richie says. “My point is that you’re braver than most fucking people, okay? Jesus, way to pick at me when I’m trying to help you.”
> 
> “I don’t need your help, I’m doing this on my own,” Eddie says. “You need to help yourself.”
> 
> “Wowza,” Richie says. “Getting personal there, Eds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS IT, WE'RE DONE. THANKS FOR STICKING WITH ME XOXOX

“I’m going to eat peanuts,” Eddie announces, six months into - whatever this is now, the two of them. It’s not entirely out of the blue - they’re pushing a shopping cart around Whole Foods - Eddie refuses to shop at like, Costco, because they have like too many preservatives or something, which Richie doesn’t entirely understand. Don’t they _want_ their food to stay good as long as possible?

“Yes,” Eddie says, when Richie brings it up, “which is why we’re not buying food filled with hydrogenated fats.”

“But consider this, Eds,” Richie says. “What if that’s what makes the food taste good?”

Apparently it’s not, and to be fair, it’s not as though Richie knows enough about it to argue his point (although to be _entirely_ fair, it’s also not as though that’s ever stopped him before).

But now Eddie wants to eat peanuts, which - sure?

“Okay,” Richie says, when it becomes evident that Eddie’s waiting for a response. “If now that you’re into nuts, you want to be into _nuts_-”

“I fucking hate you,” Eddie grumbles under his breath. He’s pushing the cart, because he says that Richie is too chaotic with it, which - whatever, just because Richie wants to go to wherever the things are that he wants, it doesn’t make him chaotic. Eddie insists on pushing it up and down _every single aisle_, even the aisles that have stuff they don’t need, like tampons.

Richie waits a beat before bumping into the cart so it goes purposely off track and says, “Sooo… peanuts?”

“I don’t have a nut allergy,” Eddie says. “I got tested for a bunch of stuff.”

“Okay,” Richie says. Eddie’s not giving him much to work with here.

“But I’m still…” Eddie stops to readjust the cart, frustrated. He’s been doing this a lot lately - _talking_, telling Richie stuff even when he obviously doesn’t want to. Richie isn’t saying anything about it in case it scares Eddie off, and besides, there’s not really anything to say - like yeah, Richie’s a fucking asshole, but he’s not _that_ much of an asshole.

“Peanuts,” he says instead. “So, like, just in their loose form? Or do you want to try peanut butter?”

“No way,” Eddie says immediately. “I’ve seen you eat that straight out of the jar with your fingers, no way am I putting your gross contaminated peanut butter in my mouth. You probably don’t even wash your hands after you’ve been to the bathroom.”

“Um, not if I’ve just gone for a piss,” Richie says. “What, you _do_? You barely even touch anything, come on. That’s not me being gross, that’s just - what everyone does.”

“You’re still in a bathroom!” Eddie says. “It’s full of - of shit and bugs and bacteria! Wash your fucking hands, it takes five seconds!”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “I can buy you your own jar of peanut butter if you want.”

“No,” Eddie says. “I don’t trust you not to forget. Or - or just use it and not tell me to prove a point.”

Richie has to admit, if only to himself, that it’s absolutely something he would do.

Anyway. That’s the first one.

-

It’s probably weird that nothing’s changed. That Eddie is gay, and Richie is gay, and they’re still just living like platonic roommates. And Richie knows - he remembers now, that Eddie kissed him once. That Richie missed his chance by taking too long to catch on, if there was a chance there at all.

It would just be a little push now. But Richie’s still scared - he can’t lose Eddie again, not when he’s just got him back. So instead he pushes his feelings down, doing his best not to feel like he’s thirteen again. Eddie is getting over a divorce and his own death, and it’s up to Richie to make things as good for Eddie as he can. At least, he means to, but he usually gets distracted by like, a Skype call from Bill or trying to write his own jokes - turns out it’s fucking difficult - so mostly they just carry on as they are, and that’s fine. Richie’s fine.

He’s vaguely aware that Eddie is doing something or trying something - he ordered a real pizza of his own the other day, even if he made sure that his adrenaline was close by, because apparently he still thinks that anaphylactic shock is a thing that _could_ happen. Well, obviously it’s a thing that could happen, but not to Eddie, because Eddie isn’t even allergic to most things, it turns out. Just like, oranges, and bee stings. Nothing at all, in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to how it was before.

But Richie doesn’t think much of it - he’s got enough to think about, and while Eddie takes up most of the space in his thoughts, it’s mostly about the way Eddie looks wrapped up in Richie’s hoodies, or bitching at the reality shows on TV or the way the scar on his cheek catches the light and Richie’s breath catches in his throat when he notices, every time.

But the second one is bad.

Richie doesn’t realise at first. There’s someone at the door and Eddie answers it and gets some sort of thick envelope - none of that is unusual. They’ve both been working from home a lot lately - Richie gearing up for his Netflix special, Eddie just trying to get his life back in order, to relax and get used to being alive again, and doing whatever his current _thing_ is - anyway, it’s not usual, is the point.

None of it is unusual until Richie hears Eddie’s ragged breathing and looks up, and Eddie’s in the middle of an asthma attack. There are papers spread out on the floor and it’s not hard to see the word DIVORCE featuring pretty prominently, and Eddie -

Look, Richie didn’t know that Eddie’s getting a divorce. Eddie’s never _said_ anything about it and while it’s not exactly a bad thing, it’s also not - but the thing right now is that Eddie’s fucking wheezing away in the middle of Richie’s living room - _their_ living room, Richie supposes it is now - and just, like. Not doing anything about it?

“Where’s your inhaler?” Richie says and Eddie looks up from where he’s got his hands on his knees, bent over, chest heaving.

“I don’t have it!” he manages to get out and Richie goes hot and cold all over.

“What the fuck? What am I supposed to do? Call 911? Do you need me to call 911?” His voice is getting gradually higher and higher and Jesus Christ, Richie’s about to call 911 anyway because _he’s_ having a fucking heart attack. Eddie can’t die again. Not like this.

“It’s psychosympatic!” Eddie yells. _Psychosomatic_, Richie thinks, but now’s not the time to correct him. “I don’t need it!”

“You fucking look like you need it!” Richie’s about to lose his fucking mind. “Where is it? Where’d you put it? Eddie, I swear to fucking God I will rip this place apart to find it and you know full fucking well I won’t tidy up after myself.”

“That’s - bullshit,” Eddie gets out, but his breathing is worsening and Richie’s ready to give him fucking mouth to mouth or something. How do you stop an asthma attack without an inhaler? Do you just like fucking yeet water into his mouth? That’s all that’s in it anyway, isn’t it - not a regular inhaler, but Eddie’s?

“I’ll fucking do it,” he says instead. Should he be sitting Eddie down, or making him lie down? Richie doesn’t do well in these situations, fucking _obviously_, he panics. He needs to fix it, right now, and he doesn’t know how.

_You didn’t save Eddie last time_. The thought springs into his mind, fully formed and unbidden. He won’t let it happen again.

Richie grabs Eddie’s shoulders and forces him to look him in the eyes. The room swims around him, sterile white and bare and the first thing Richie’s doing when they get over this is painting the room fucking blue or something so he doesn’t get hospital flashbacks. Fucking hell.

“You tell me where your goddamn inhaler is right now,” he says, “or I’ll - I don’t fucking know, call your wife!”

Eddie’s eyes go wide and round, the whites so visible that for a moment Richie thinks his eyes have rolled back into his head. Is this actually what a heart attack feels like?

Then Eddie chokes out “Kitchen drawer,” and Richie lets go of him, runs into the kitchen so fast that he almost trips up over his own goddamn feet. He flings everything out of the drawer until he finds it, buried at the bottom underneath old letters that Richie felt might be vaguely important and loose screws that had fallen off furniture, presumably, but he couldn’t tell which furniture or whereabouts.

Eddie’s turning purple when Richie gets back and a very real tendril of fear starts to snake its way through his stomach, the kind of fear that Richie had forgotten on a visceral level. He hasn’t been scared, _properly_ scared in a while now, not since Eddie came back.

“Fuck,” he says, and curls Eddie’s fingers around the inhaler. “If you don’t take that right now, I swear to God I’ll kill you myself.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at Richie - of course he does, in the middle of a fucking asthma attack - but he takes it. The relief that rolls through Richie like a wave is intense. His hands are shaking, his legs are shaking, and he collapses onto the couch and doesn’t take his eyes off Eddie until his colour’s returned to normal.

“You need your inhaler,” he says.

Eddie’s resolute. “I don’t want to use my inhaler anymore,” he says. “I don’t need it. It’s another thing that my mom left me with and I don’t want it.”

“Okay, but like, maybe not all at once,” Richie says. “Psychosomatic things can still kill you! I can’t -” He has to stop because he can feel the urge to cry bubbling up inside his throat.

“If I die, I die inhaler-free,” Eddie says stubbornly, which is just like, the worst statement that anyone has ever made, ever.

“Or how about this,” Richie says. “Hot take: you don’t die.”

“Well, I _won’t_ die,” Eddie says, “because I don’t need the inhaler.”

“You don’t _physically _need the inhaler,” Richie says. “Maybe you need it psychologically!”

“You don’t understand,” Eddie says. His face is still pale and drawn, and Richie is ready to stuff that inhaler down his fucking throat next time. “I don’t want it. I came back, and I’m not doing the same stuff I did before.”

“But maybe you should if you_ need it to live_.” Richie stops. He knows Eddie and there’s no way that he’s going to win this argument, not when Eddie’s like this: arms folded, digging in and refusing to move. “How about a compromise,” he says instead. “I’ll hold onto your inhaler and I won’t give you it unless you ask for it. But the deal is, you have to ask. If you need it.”

“As if,” Eddie scoffs. “You’ll just make me take it the minute something happens.”

Richie slumps further down the couch, rubbing at his forehead. “You gotta work with me here, Eds,” he says at last. “I get it, as much as I can get it. Whatever. Inhaler represents your abusive mom-”

“Abusive?” Richie risks a glance at Eddie; what little colour was left in his face has now leeched out, and his fingers are white-knuckled around his inhaler. “She’s not - she wasn’t-”

“Okaaay,” Richie says slowly. “I didn’t realise this was something that we hadn’t unpacked yet.”

“She wanted what was best for me,” Eddie says. Richie feels a sinking feeling in his stomach, like he’s stumbled across a landmine in what he thought was just a field. “She didn’t - she wasn’t abusive.”

“I feel very unqualified for this conversation,” Richie says. “We were all fucked up!” _Except I wasn’t_, he thinks. Not with his parents, neither was Mike, or Stan. Just Bill, Bevvie and Eds, getting their own private horror shows at home. When Richie got to go home, after the clown shit or whatever, his mom made his dinner and his dad made deals with him for chores and allowance.

Eddie got to go home to something lurking in the living room, ready to eat him alive - and it wasn’t Pennywise.

“Maybe,” Richie says tentatively, “you need therapy.”

“I _have_ a therapist,” Eddie says. He’s still turned up to 100 - Richie holds out a hand to him, pulls him down onto the couch.

“I get it, what you’re doing. The peanut thing,” Richie says. “Great! The inhaler thing, not so much.”

“I’ve been doing things that scare me,” Eddie says. “I want to be brave.”

“You _are_ brave,” Richie says again. He’s said it already, every time, but he’ll say it as many times as he needs to in order to get Eddie to believe it. And it’s not - he’s not just saying it, if Eddie wasn’t brave, that would be fine! Richie doesn’t _care_. But clearly this is important to Eddie. And there is more than one way to be brave, even if Eddie can’t see that.

“I’m not,” Eddie says, “but I will be.”

“Eddie,” Richie says. He’s trying to use his serious voice, but it comes out sounding kind of British, so he starts again. “Eds.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, automatic.

“Eddie,” Richie says again. “Listen. How many thirteen year olds do you think faced down the personification of their childhood fears?”

“I don’t know if ‘personification’ is the right word here-”

“_And_,” Richie carries on, slightly louder, “how many fucking forty year olds went back to fight a giant fucking clown murderer?”

“When you say ‘clown murderer’ it sounds like It murdered the clowns,” Eddie says. “Technically, _we’re_ the clown murderers.”

“Well, it wasn’t a fucking clown in the first place, really, so don’t get fucking pedantic with me,” Richie says. “My point is that you’re braver than most fucking people, okay? Jesus, way to pick at me when I’m trying to _help_ you.”

“I don’t need your help, I’m doing this on my own,” Eddie says. “You need to help _yourself_.”

“Wowza,” Richie says. “Getting personal there, Eds.”

“I mean it,” Eddie insists. “You’re just mooching around doing nothing! At least I’m _trying_. You’re not doing anything any different from before It!”

“Okay, well, Bill still can’t write a fucking ending so maybe funnel some of this anger into negative Amazon reviews and help _him_,” Richie says, defensive. “Just because Ben and Bevvie fucked off to a yacht doesn’t mean I want to turn my life upside down.”

“I’m not saying _that_,” Eddie says and Richie shrugs a shoulder and says, “This whole self-help guru thing is not a good look on you, Eds.”

“Don’t fucking _call_ me that,” Eddie snaps. “Just get your shit together, Jesus. It’s like you _want_ to be miserable, but you don’t even have It to blame for that anymore and you can’t blame me, either.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Richie says and Eddie says, “No! And you shouldn’t! You got to put your life on hold when I was dead and good, you brought me back, fuckin’ A. But now you don’t have that excuse and I’m here and I’m trying to make some changes and fix my shit and you’re not and you should be.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, and stops. Eddie’s still got his arms folded across his chest and he’s shaking so slightly, almost imperceptibly.

“Don’t you want to be happy?” Eddie says and Richie swallows. His throat feels raw.

“I _am_ happy,” he says finally. “I just - I wanted my friends back.”

“And you’ve got us,” Eddie says. “But don’t try and lie to my fucking face that it’s all you wanted.”

-

If Eddie can be brave, Richie can be brave.

-

He throws up twice before the coming out stand-up special, but once he’s on stage it’s like usual - it just all drops away and he’s not Richie Tozier, terrified homo, but Trashmouth. That makes it _okay_, gives it a level of separation - it’s not repressed sexuality or internalised homophobia anymore, it’s just a joke.

“Like in Harry Potter or whatever, with the Boggart,” he says to Eddie, who makes a face. “What? I can read.”

“I know you can read, you got straight fucking A’s in school,” Eddie says and Richie tries to hide the flush of pleasure that Eddie was paying enough attention to him at school to know that. “But Harry Potter? You’re a fucking grown man.”

“Um, excuse me, Harry Potter transcends age,” Richie says, “and it’s not like I read it last week, you asshole, I read it when it came out.”

Eddie’s tapping away on his phone so Richie thinks he’s won, but then Eddie looks up. “It came out in 1998, so you’d have been… how old? You were thirteen in ‘88, right?”

“No,” Richie says, “don’t worry about it, anyway, that’s not the point, I was talking about Boggarts-”

“Twenty three,” Eddie says triumphantly. He slips his phone back into his pocket. “Way too old to be caring about magic wands.”

“You watched Lord of the Rings last week!” Richie points out and Eddie rolls his eyes and says, “Gandalf doesn’t have a magic wand, he has a _staff_. It’s different.”

“Oh yeah, now you’ve realised you’re into _staffs_,” Richie says. “You’re just hot for Gandalf. That’s all this is.”

“This is not about _me_,” Eddie says. “This is about you being a fucking child.”

“This was actually about my Netflix special,” Richie says indignantly. “We were talking about me!”

“Oh, when _aren’t_ we talking about you? Fucking Narcissus over here,” Eddie says, but Richie can tell he doesn’t mean it.

“I was brave,” Richie says finally, but it comes out quiet, so quiet that he’s not sure if Eddie even heard it. Eddie doesn’t say anything but after a minute, he puts his hand on Richie’s arm and Richie lets himself flop against Eddie’s side, his head on Eddie’s shoulder.

“You _are_ brave,” Eddie says, into Richie’s hair. It tickles. Richie doesn’t mind it. “You always were.”

“I was not,” Richie says. “I wanted to get the fuck out first both times. I was ready to get on a plane away from Derry.”

“Okay, well I’m not invested enough in this to list every single fucking thing you’ve done,” Eddie says. “Be brave or don’t be brave, whatever. I don’t care. Just be happy.”

“I am,” Richie says. “I was.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything. Richie can feel him doing the crossword, his arm shifting every time he pencils in another letter, the light scratch of the nib on paper. Even after all these months, he’s still enjoying the sound of another person in his flat, the lack of that all-consuming silence. And of course, it’s even better because it’s Eddie.

“Your stand-up was okay,” Eddie says, after a little while. “Better than your ghost-writers, anyway.”

Richie blinks and shifts to get more comfortable. “Did you laugh?”

“Yes,” Eddie says. “More than I did at anyone else, anyway. They picked some really shitty openers for you, probably to make you look better.”

“Sounds like it worked.”

There’s something reassuring about how fierce Eddie’s voice is - like now he’s in, he’s _all_ in. Richie can’t just be a comedian, he is the best comedian, according to Eddie - and he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed this, having Eddie on his side, fighting for him no matter what.

However much they’d argued, as kids, Eddie was the first to pull his shower cap off when Richie said it was dumb, would fight side to side with Richie against Bowers and his gang. However much they pissed each other off, it was still always the two of them.

-

Eddie breaks first. But of course he does; Richie has thirty years of practice of keeping secrets, of being in love with Eddie without telling him. Richie could take this secret to his grave - literally. Besides, it seems selfish to ask for more - Eddie died, and now Eddie is alive. Asking for more seems like asking for trouble.

Richie finds it enough to sit on his sofa, watching the TV reflection dance in Eddie’s eyes, to pick fights with him whenever it feels like there’s an instant that Eddie might not be looking at him or thinking about him. It’s fucking childish, is what it is, but it feels sustainable. Richie could live his whole life like this and be happy about it, he thinks.

It’s a night like that when Eddie comes over and sits next to him. He’s worrying his lower lip between his teeth and so clearly working himself up to something that Richie just wants to - he doesn’t know what. He’d carry everything that Eddie carries, if Eddie would let him.

“There’s only one thing left,” Eddie says. “I can - eat nuts, and I’ve done all my allergies, except for the real ones, and I even - I thought about getting a tattoo, but I don’t think I can, and I don’t want to that badly, anyway. Can you imagine having something on you - forever? What if I changed my mind?”

“Oh, Eddie, my love,” Richie says, as fondly as he’ll let himself. “I feel like you’d have a complete and total nervous breakdown if a needle was even in the same room as you.”

“I divided it into reasonable and unreasonable,” Eddie says, “and there’s no point in getting a tattoo just for the sake of it.”

It would be hot though, Richie can’t help but think, his mouth a little dry. But then, anything that Eddie does is kind of hot, which is hugely embarrassing but also still true.

“Okay,” Richie says, trying not to think about black ink on Eddie’s skin, about what he’d want drawn onto him forever (about _R+E_).

“Okay?” Eddie repeats. “You’re such a self-absorbed asshole that you don’t even want to know what the last thing on my bucket list is now?”

“Does it count as a bucket list if you already kicked it?” Richie wonders out loud and Eddie makes a sort of _harrumph_ sound; clenches his fists and says, “Fine, you asshole, I’ll fucking do it myself.”

That’s all the warning that Richie gets before Eddie kisses him.

It takes Richie a while to catch up to what’s actually happening, and he maybe makes a surprised _mmph_ noise into Eddie’s mouth, which really isn’t - in all of his fantasies about this, at thirteen or forty or whatever, that never really played into them. Richie actually always imagined himself being pretty smooth about it, which he absolutely isn’t, right now, and oh Jesus why is his mind still going a mile a minute when Eddie’s -

Eddie’s _here_ and Eddie’s kissing him, his mouth warm against Richie’s. Eddie even slips him a bit of tongue and Richie’s brain short circuits even as his body catches up a little bit, and he grabs onto Eddie’s waist, pulling him onto his lap.

“Finally,” Eddie grumbles. “I was starting to think that you were just going to let me do - do everything.”

There’s a hitch there which Richie doesn’t want to mention - he presses his thumb into the crease between Eddie’s eyebrows instead, marveling that he’s allowed to do this now. _I’d let you do anything_, he thinks instead.

Eddie clutches onto Richie’s forearms, digging his fingers in hard enough to hurt and says, “You’re not allowed to - don’t run away.”

“You remember that?” Richie says.

Eddie’s frown deepens. “Obviously I fucking remember that,” he says. “I was heartbroken.”

“You were not,” Richie says, before he can stop himself, and Eddie shrugs a shoulder. He’s not meeting Richie’s eyes anymore, staring down instead.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “I wasn’t - heartbroken. But I was - confused.”

“_You_ were confused?” Richie says. “You never mentioned it again!”

“Neither did you!”

“But I wanted to,” Richie says. “I even said - I was sorry, I didn’t realise, but I wanted to. I told you I wanted to.”

“Well, there was a lot going on!” Eddie says. “It was my first kiss and just - saliva, body stuff, it kind of - I didn’t want to get mono. I didn’t want to get AIDS!”

“You can’t get AIDS from kissing,” Richie says, like that’s really the problem here, and Eddie’s grip tightens on his arms.

“I know,” he says. “But my mom - I couldn’t be like that, not while I was - there. I couldn’t - I wanted to be with you, but I couldn’t - be sick and be - be queer. And the disease - it was dirty, it was wrong, it took me - it’s taken me a long time to get to, to this.”

Each word sounds like it’s being dragged out of him with a fish-hook and Richie leans forwards, presses his forehead against Eddie’s. As if Eddie could ever think that he wasn’t brave.

“It’s not dirty,” he says quietly and Eddie briefly closes his eyes.

“I know that now,” he says. “But it’s hard to unlearn something, especially something you’d forgotten.”

“I never forgot this,” Richie says. “Not really.”

“The weird bit is,” Eddie says, and they’re whispering now, so close that they’re probably passing their breaths back and forth between each other. “The really weird bit is that this isn’t scary at all.”

“This is the easy bit,” Richie says. “Wait til you find out about my kinks, _then_ you’ll be scared. Wait until I take you into my sex dungeon. My red room of pain.”

“Please, you probably cry after sex,” Eddie says, and it’s supposed to sound like an insult but all Richie can think is _maybe_ and Eddie seems to realise it at the same time, leaning closer. “I don’t mind,” he says. “If you do.”

“I’m not going to,” Richie says, but he’s not so sure. “I’m an international playboy, I fucked tons of men.”

Eddie winces. “Don’t say that,” he begs. “I know you’re lying but also like…”

“AIDS?” Richie says and Eddie pulls a face.

“The leper really - it really got to me.”

“I have - done some things,” Richie says. “But I’m - I’m pretty sure I’m clean, and I’ll get tested, before we do anything.”

“That,” Eddie says, “is so fucking hot. Jesus Christ. I love you.”

“Oh my God,” Richie says. “No! I want to say it first!”

“What?”

“I’ve been waiting longer, that’s so fucking unfair,” Richie says. “I love you. I - I brought you back, I put our names onto the kissing bridge-”

“I put _your_ name on the kissing bridge,” Eddie says. “I kissed you first! Both times! Fuck off, trying to win this. _I_ win.”

“I don’t know why we’re even still talking,” Richie says. “I’ve been able to talk to you for - for years, but I haven’t been able to do _this_.”

“We can kiss,” Eddie says. “Or make out or whatever, I don’t fucking care. It’s kind of gross but -”

“But you’re into it,” Richie says, pleased.

“Only when you think about it,” Eddie says. “It’s pretty gross, dude. It’s swapping saliva.”

“You initiated it both times,” Richie says. “You _want_ my saliva.”

Eddie flushes pink, but doesn’t disagree. “Just - getting tested first,” he says. “I just want to make sure.”

“Okay,” Richie says. “But I have an idea.”

-

There’s a moment, when he’s on his knees in front of Eddie - the room’s dark, the curtains drawn and it’s just the two of them. They get to be here, together; Pennywise couldn’t stop it, Eddie’s mom couldn’t stop it, the - the fucking societal pressure of homophobia didn’t - couldn’t - they get to have this, now.

It doesn’t make it worth it, all the time they missed out on. But it’s better than the alternative - Eddie, still with someone he never wanted to be with, Richie, keeping everything a secret and fucking vomiting every time he got close to anyone who wasn’t Eddie. And yeah, okay, maybe there’s something really fucking codependent about this but it works for Bev and Ben, and they’ve worked so fucking hard for this, Richie thinks that they’re allowed to be happy.

That maybe they deserve it.

But right here, right now - Richie’s about to suck Eddie’s cock and he’s so fucking ready for it he’s afraid he’s going to start fucking drooling. His mouth is filling with saliva just thinking about it and God, Richie has thought about this when he didn’t even know that he was thinking about it. Eddie’s eyes are dark in the dim light; his pupils swallowing up his irises and he’s looking at Richie like - like no one has ever looked at Richie before.

Like he loves him.

“Please,” Richie says, “let me-”

“I - yeah, okay,” Eddie says and swallows; Richie watches him, fascinated by it. “If you’re sure? You really want to?”

“I really want to,” Richie says fervently. “And you’ve never - no one ever-”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Eddie says quickly and Richie tips forward, rests his forehead on Eddie’s leg.

“I wouldn’t,” he says, and he would. But saying it counts. “I just can’t believe I get to - and I get to be the first-”

“Yeah, so I won’t know if you do a shitty job,” Eddie says, and startles Richie into a laugh. “You’d better do a good job, Trashmouth, I’ll grade you on it.”

And that does something Richie didn’t know it would - like a fucking electric shock right to his dick. He files it away for later, wants to turn it over and over in his mind before he brings it to Eddie, drops his sexual needs in front of him like a cat with a dead mouse.

Richie’s needs are mostly _whatever you want, Eddie_ and there’s no use pretending otherwise. But he can try.

“If I’d known this is what it takes to shut you up,” Eddie says, and stops. Richie looks up at him.

“You’d have let me do it a long time ago?”

“No,” Eddie says, “we were thirteen, asshole, I’d barely hit puberty. Besides.” He stops, forcibly swallows again. Richie tries not to be in love with the bob of his adam’s apple. “I like hearing you talk.”

It should probably be embarrassing how turned on Richie is - he’s vaguely aware that he’s probably going to come just from sucking Eddie’s cock, without laying a hand on himself.

“We missed so much of each others’ lives,” Eddie says wonderingly. “I don’t want to miss anything else.”

It would be stupid to think that this was everything Richie imagined it would be - reality doesn’t usually live up to fantasies, after all, but Richie never claimed to be the smartest fucking person in the world. It’s - it’s _Eddie_, and the noises that he’s making - that Richie is causing - he tightens his grip on Eddie’s legs and it’s not like Richie’s a fucking cocksucking expert or anything, but just the fact that it’s _them_-

Eddie comes down his throat and Richie swallows, pulling off. It feels almost religious - it’s not, but there’s something quiet and reverential about it; a sense of something greater. It won’t always be like that - Richie’s pretty sure he’s not going to be able to keep his mouth shut when Eddie doesn’t have his dick down it, but for their first time it’s - nice. It’s special.

Richie stands up to pull his own jeans down - it’s crazy that he hasn’t come in his pants and his jeans are around his ankles when he jams a hand down his boxers and Eddie reaches forward to wrap his hand around Richie’s wrist and stop him.

“No,” Eddie says. He’s flushing but his eyes are dark and intent on Richie’s. “You can’t, not until I say so.”

Richie’s mouth goes dry. He’s rock hard - has been since this started, so hard it hurts, and his cock twitches at Eddie’s words.

“Please,” he says and Eddie shakes his head, reaching forward to pull Richie’s hand away.

“Get on the couch.”

Richie feels so full that he’s going to explode, or jump out of his skin. Every nerve ending feels electric; his skin feels oversensitive and alive. He wants to say something, but he struggles to find words - it’s like Eddie has short-circuited his brain and Richie only exists to do whatever Eddie tells him to.

“Now - now take everything off,” Eddie says. His licks his lips and he looks nervous but determined, which is Richie’s favourite way for Eddie to look. He complies, as fast as he can, wriggling out of his jeans and dropping his boxers on the floor.

Eddie makes a weird face and then says, “Okay, can you pick those up and fold them? Just so - they’re not bothering me,” and it’s just not _fair_ that even this, this right here, this fucking anal retentive insistence on tidiness (as if Eddie can’t be a fucking slob) in the middle of this _goddamn situation_ is like - like fucking hotter than anything Richie has ever experienced in his entire fucking _life_, and he can say that now, because he remembers it all.

“Okay,” Eddie says, once Richie’s put his jeans and folded his boxers over the back of a chair. He’s never going to be able to look at the back of that chair again. Eddie is instilling some weird fucking triggers in him. “Now… now touch yourself. But let me watch. And you still can’t - come, not until I say so.”

Something in Richie thinks _did he do with this Myra_ but the thought’s gone almost as fast as it arrived. He knows the truth - that Eddie never did anything like this, that this is _theirs_ and wouldn’t work - wouldn’t exist outside of their dynamic. And then he doesn’t have time to think, because he’s stroking himself, working his thumb over the tip, and there’s no lube and it’s dry and that exquisite combination of pleasure and pain and _Eddie_, watching him, like there is nothing else going on in the world is almost enough-

“No,” Eddie says sharply. He’s crouching by the couch, and he digs his fingers into Richie’s arm hard enough that he’s going to be bruised after. “Not until I say so.”

“Please,” Richie begs, “please, Eds, I want to, I can’t, please let me, please say I can-”

“You’re doing so well,” Eddie says. “Keep going for me, but you can’t come yet.”

Richie’s crying now, tears leaking out from his eyes even as he still touches himself. Eddie’s got one hand on his leg and the other on his arm and his gaze keeps slipping from Richie’s dick to his face, wonderingly, like Eddie can’t believe this is happening either, like they’re both about to wake up.

It’s the opposite of Pennywise - if It had shown them their fears, this is Richie’s fantasy, his dreams, all he ever wanted - Eddie, staring at him like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen in his life, telling him what to do, what he wants, and what he wants is _Richie_.

He makes a noise and has to stop again - it’s torture, getting so close to the precipice and backing down. Eddie makes a noise then, deep in his throat - he lets go of Richie’s arm to push his hair back from his face with one hand.

“Okay,” he says. “You’ve been so good. Come for me, Richie.”

And Richie explodes.

-

“I’m glad you got me back,” Eddie says sleepily. He’s drifting in and out of sleep on the couch, refusing to admit he’s tired like a little kid up past his bedtime. They were sharing a blanket but Eddie’s managed to pull it almost entirely over himself and Richie’s just about got one arm under there, and he doesn’t understand how it’s possible for his heart to feel this _full_.

“I’m glad I got you back too,” he says quietly, running his hand over Eddie’s hair. It seems impossible, now, that there was a world where he didn’t have this, where a Richie existed without an Eddie. He can’t think any Richie would exist that wouldn’t move heaven and earth to get Eddie back, to keep them together, the way they’re meant to be.

Richie doesn’t remember the ritual, but he remembers the book. He’d found it in his luggage when they got back to Chicago; ran his hands over the cover. What they’d done for Eddie, they couldn’t do for Stan - they couldn’t dig his body up, stand in a circle around the bath tub with their hands cut open. Richie had known it wouldn’t work for them in his bones, the same way he knew he couldn’t leave it at that, either.

The Turtle wouldn’t let it happen that way, but it didn’t mean that it couldn’t happen at all.

-

In Georgia, Patricia Uris receives a parcel.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to follow me on tumblr, my username is blaisenon. I haven't used it in years but I'm there for these boys now.


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